#mean girl cressida as a little treat

[smxmuffinpeddling]

Cressida was up to something, Penelope just knew it.

She watched the other woman like a hawk, fully utilizing her skills for picking up gossip to pick up on the subtlety cruel ways of Cressida Cowper. And what was worse was that apparently she had a new target besides Penelope herself to torment. Poor Eloise seemed to be taking the brunt of her social blows.

"Oh, clumsy me," Cressida tittered pompously as she blatantly spilled her cup of lemonade all over Eloise's hands, ruining her elbow-length gloves. "How very unfortunate, it appears you'll have to take those off. How... indecent," Cressida said with an evil little smirk on her face as she loomed over Eloise.

Oh, how it made Penelope's blood boil. She slowly stepped closer so that she may hear the pair better over the orchestra of the ball. She went unnoticed, and she was tempted to splash her own lemonade right back at Cressida's stupid uncouth face. She could tolerate Cressida looking down at her, but Eloise had actually befriended that ridiculous blonde over the summer! Clearly the friendship had taken a turn for the worse sometime during the season.

What was most infuriating, and the thing that confused Penelope the most, was Eloise not getting hopping mad at her behavior.

"Really, Miss Cowper? This is the third pair this month. You're not being subtle," Eloise grumbled loudly in displeasure as she rolled her now soaked gloves down her arms.

"I have no idea what you are inferring, Miss Bridgerton. Sometimes I just happen to be clumsy," Cressida fanned herself as she eyed her handy work with self satisfaction. What a piece of work she was. Penelope could've snapped the stem on her flute as she watched them.

Eloise forced a smile on her face, even as heat infiltrated her gaze as she regarded the taller woman adorned in pink florals. "Unfortunately for you, now my shameful skin is on full display."

"Yes, very unfortunate indeed."

They stared at each other for what seemed like a full minute and Penelope waited for Eloise to smack Cressida across her smug face with her lemonade-tinged gloves, but the moment never came.

Instead, Eloise suddenly turned away, her face red. It was probably from all the anger she was holding inside. "Its fine, I think there were extra gloves in this room over here." And with that, Eloise quickly stepped away down the hallway. Probably to cry in humiliation, Penelope was no stranger to the feeling.

In the meantime, Cressida's smirk turned into an even bigger grin, which she quickly hid behind her fan before anyone could notice. Anyone besides Penelope of course. How dare she look so pleased to torment other women? She was clearly enjoying herself too much.

To Penelope's shock, Cressida soon followed in Eloise's footsteps. Penelope had to turn away and pretend she wasn't staring when Cressida checked her surroundings to make sure no one followed her. The moment she turned away, Penelope scurried after them as fast as her hem line would allow.

Was it not enough to bully Eloise out in the open in front of the ton, she also had to do it in private? Even Cressida left Penelope alone after she retreated in defeat, but it appeared she was becoming more out of control with power!

Penelope pressed her ear to the door she spied silently closing from her spot down the hall. She wanted so desperately to save Eloise from her situation, but she was sure Eloise wouldn't appreciate her pity.

"Does your cruelty know no bounds, Cressida?" She heard Eloise's muffled voice through the wooden door. "Must you torment me at every opportunity? Sleep has been eluding me more and more, and the dishes I consume don't bring me any satisfaction when I think of you." Eloise really did sound on the verge of a breakdown as she spoke, and Penelope wanted to cry on her old friend's behalf.

"This is your fault," Cressida responded with a voice that was strangely unlike the way she usually spoke at functions. Now she sounded a little deeper, a little rougher around the edges. Penelope pressed herself harder to the door.

"This is but a taste of the torment you inflict on me," Cressida continued, making Penelope's brows furrow in confusion. "This is merely a natural consequence of your actions."

What was that demented woman going on about? Surely Eloise didn't do anything to Cressida to warrant such treatment!

"A punishment, you mean," Eloise groaned. In pain? There was was a yelp and some shuffling. Penelope was crushing the door trying to listen in. "Oh, you're vile. Just evil," Eloise struggled to say with a gasp.

Oh my god, was Cressida hurting Eloise in some way??? Penelope started to panic. It was one thing to spill a drink on her, it was another matter entirely if Cressida was inflicting physical injury on the other girl!

"If I did anymore to you, you wouldn't be able to hide the evidence, or show yourself in society again," Cressida said, and Penelope could just hear the wickedness is her voice. "Unfortunately I'll have to satisfy myself with just this for now."

"Oh, how I hate you, Cressida Cowper." Eloise made another anguished noise and Penelope had heard enough. She slammed the door open.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ELOISE, YOU DEVIL?" Penelope demanded of Cressida. Who now stared at her in shock, mouth hanging open at her sudden appearance.

For a second, Penelope was confused because Eloise wasn't also standing there with Cressida. Until she spotted her stocking clad legs sticking out from Cressida's voluminous skirts. And there Eloise was, laying on the ground spread eagle as Cressida stood over her, one foot on either side of her head, hands hiking up her skirts enough that Penelope could see Eloise's eyes bug out of her head at the sight of her.

Eloise unceremoniously spit out a portion of what appeared to be Cressida's undergarments from her spluttering mouth. "P-PENELOPE?!" Eloise exclaimed with a fiercely flushed face.

Penelope blinked once. Twice. The three of them portraits of frozen mortification.

"Apologies, did not mean to interrupt," Penelope dismissed herself, face blank as she promptly closed the door to the scene taking place within.

Dearest gentle reader,

I am retiring.

[gleefullypolin]

Initial thoughts on first watch through of Part 2

I will need to watch the season again a few more times as I was overwhelmed to be sure as a lot was going on. But my quick thoughts on storylines...

I'll start with my least favorite part. Sorry but it's the elephant in the room.

Ben.

I cannot. Every time they wasted screentime to go back to him fucking, I was like. God no, please make it stop. I mean I got it the first three times we showed it. Was it really necessary to keep harping on it. Honestly, shit or get off the pot with Ben's story. I'm bored and I don't know where they are going with this. I'm disinterested now.

Fran/John

This got better for me in the back half than the first half. I took no interest in them in the first 4 episodes. it was a snooze fest and while I would not watch a full season of them, they were cute in the back half and while the "dying breath" line was a bit harsh (seriously writers was that necessary) I'm even less interested in exploring a full season of Fran's actual story, not because it's been gender bended to Michaela, I just don't care for Fran's character. Personal opinion, sorry.

Kate/Anthony

Loved competitive Anthony at game night, we are the same Anthony, truly first borns. Kate has relaxed him for sure tho. Loved how he seemed to truly support his siblings, first with Colin and again with Fran in their choices to marry. Wished we could have seen his face when Pen announced she was LW after he was so clear that there was no way anyone could be her under his nose as RULER over the Bridgerton lands or some shit. Would have been a delight to see, yet...he did once again run off and leave his duty as leader of the Bridgerton family once again. For all this fandom screams that Anthony is the only man of the house with the actual job and responsibility he has yet once again disappeared from it yet again. No matter, there was little of this duo for me to take true aim at this season and thus not much for me to say other than what I have.

So moving on....

Cressida

What is there to say...Who's afraid of the big bad BITCH. Well not Pen. And no one else, for off to the country she goes and good on ya! Sorry, don't let the door hit ya on the way out. I'm not sad to see you and your big ass sleeves go.

Violet/Marcus

Tend that garden girl. TEND THAT GARDEN! That's all I gotta say, S4 is gonna bring Mama Bridgerton her just desserts! It was lovely seeing her navigating the dating mart and being nervous herself. I can't wait to see her needing to lean on Lady D and her children as she tries to figure this out herself next season.

Eloise

I was up, I was down. I was on the floor in anger and tears and then crying with joy. I understood you, I swore at you, I still love you dearly. There is much for you to learn about love and the world and I will welcome you home to do that. I did feel like she grew a lot this season. She was confused by love. Love of Pen, Love of Colin, love of being a woman in society and finding her way in what all of that means again. It was nice to see that. I loved her scenes with Colin and Pen and even with Benedict. I do look forward to her season as I feel like she had the most growth this season and while I feel like Ben's is next (boo) she can't be far behind, though I would welcome them doing her and Ben together in 4 at this point since it takes so fucking long to film these.

The Featheringtons

The most growth came from the family. Portia, Pru, and Phillipa had a lot of growth. Between mama being put in her place, then having to face how she has treated her daughter, how she sees her daughter, and then realizing how her daughter is stronger than she realized was quite the journey. And then beyond that seeing the jealousy the sisters had for Pen all along, the way it burned in them because some part of them always felt that their mama loved her most, favored her most even with her treatment. That all the girls really wanted was love of their mama. Seeing that family all together at the end, not jealous of who had the heir, just happy, with their families was beautiful.

Colin

Oh dear sensitive Colin Bridgerton. You really are a soft angel boy. He was so in love, so smitten and we needed that for him to understand how he felt up front but the moment he found out about Pen, you could feel the heart break, the confusion, the anger, the loss. And it didn't just magically heal. He loved Pen, he knew that but the burn inside to reconcile that he couldnt tear LW from her, couldn't rip it from her soul was literally a dark cloud over him for the back half. I took no issue with his words in anger, the were to be expected. He no more meant them or believed them than the stupid ass words people say in anger or stating he would never court her. They were simply words.

His mother was right. He is sensitive. Sleeping on the couch, pouting everywhere. He could not reconcile his thoughts. Could not get her to give up LW for anything and his brain could not comprehend. It was only when he went back to her letters that he realized Pen was not LW, LW was Pen. He loved ONE woman and they were the same woman. He also needed to stop taking control and stop trying to save the day. Pen was a capable woman and he needed to stop trying to control her.

I think the greatest thing about Colin as a character is that he is a sensitive person who loves wholly. He is able to put away the notion of the MAN needing to be the one who runs things. He lets her be a partner with him, in sex, in life, in their roles. This is shown not just in the fact he lets her take on how to fix the LW situation in the end, but also having her on top in the bedroom in their final sex scene. She's a participant in their marriage, not a submissive wife. This is refreshing in this world and I'm happy to see it in Colin.

Penelope

What a ride for Pen she had. She was faced with giving up her dreams to let Colin thrive in his. And she was willing to do so, lets just preface they gave us that scene where she put away LW for us to transition to Colin finally losing his writers block and happily writing away. She gave it up only to be faced with a challenge and needing to take up the quill again. Pen needed to save the Bridgertons and did so later on but she was willing to give everything up for Colin.

I loved her convos with Gen and how it was another woman who allowed her to see that women did not need to give up their worth for men. AMEN! No one said, Colin needed to give up his dreams but Pen absolutely was able to have hers too. I loved this and then to see her stand up to Colin in their second fight, to let her voice be heard to him and not let him talk over her was also important.

The fact that Pen stood up for herself, diverging from the books where Colin does this for her in the books, having Pen stand up for herself thus saving herself and outing herself to the ton, I liked this. Pen was able to put LW away and use her OWN voice to the ton and explain to everywhere why she created this entire empire. I thought this was beautifully done and then having her let Colin out of the marriage afterwards so that she basically put them now on a level playing field was perfect. His speech at that point should be put in a museum because it leveled me. I think this put them finally into the right place for their marriage and lets them begin as equals. They both have a career, they both have a purpose, they have each other and they do things together. She's not out there alone anymore.

What a fucking journey. God I love this show.

So yeah, I know I'm seeing people upset, they didn't get the spoilers they wanted, didn't get some pieces they built up and you are allowed to feel that way. I think my only gripe I have is that our sex montage was cut from the show and instead we got too much Ben and his tiresome threesome that went no where. So that is my only gripe. Give me that deleted scene and I'll be happy forever. Otherwise....

Polin is life! I loved everything they gave us and I have no complaints.

A+++ They have a happy fan from me.

[mandaplease10]

A Polin Take Nobody Asked For #6

Show Polin Vs. Book Polin Part 1

I have seen a lot of fans upset over the way the showrunner/writers handled Polin's story in comparison to the book version. Of course, we're always going to compare because it's a given. However, I'm a little shocked on how so many are complaining about it when their story was never really true to the books to begin with.

The biggest differences are their ages and time frame & their relationship prior to getting together.

In the book, both Pen and Colin are like a decade older than their characters in the show & they didn't really have a friendship before getting together either. The book is very much a best friend's brother's trope.

In the show, they're teenagers and have an established friendship meaning it's a true friends to lovers trope.

Let's take a deep dive and compare their stories and why the show handled it differently.

Show Polin: Ages

So, obviously the fact that they are teenagers/early 20's in the show means that they would not have the same level headedness as an adult. Both Pen and Colin are trying to find themselves and their purpose in life.

Colin very much feels like he has to be like Anthony & Benedict in order for them to take him seriously. They have always seen him as the little brother who tries to hard and doesn't think. He feels like he has to be someone he isn't because most people don't care about him truly being himself because every time he does he is talked down to and treated like he's too young to know what he wants. No one cares about his travels and no one even bothers to respond to his letters, which then makes him wonder if he's even wanted by his family.

Pen is tired of being the laughingstock of the Ton and in her own family. The only minuscule of happiest she gets is her time with Eloise and the Bridgertons & when she is writing her column. After her sisters are married and she's faced with living with her mother as a spinster, she is determined to get out of the house and get married, even if it isn't to the one person she wants. She still has the self esteem of a young naive girl, so she must learn how to grow her confidence into the clever, beautiful woman she is.

Book Polin: Their Ages

Colin has spent the majority of his teens and twenties traveling and being away from home. He has seen the world and has lived a well experienced life. We really don't get much of how he's feeling in regards to his life or how he felt over the years.

Pen has lived with her mother this whole time and as given up on the marriage mart. She's happy with living as a spinster and has created an empire with Lady Whistledown. She is super close with her younger sister and Eloise and doesn't seem to have the same initial longing as show Pen when it comes to marriage.

Show Polin: Friends to Lovers

In seasons 1 & 2, we see Pen and Colin's friendship blossom and grow into a very close relationship. I would even say that their friendship was closer than Pen and Eloise just because they both seemed to really listen to the other and offer support. We see the way that Colin is there for Pen when Cressida teases her and with Featherington Scheme in season 2. We also know that their letters to each other are meaningful and Colin started viewing her in a different light when he came back in season 2. Being with each other means they both can talk about anything that they couldn't with others because no one else bothered to take the time to listen.

Book Polin: Best Friend's Brother

We don't really see a relationship with Pen and Colin in the books other than Pen being Eloise's friend and a close friend to the family. It's mentioned that there were times Pen and Colin danced at Balls together, but it was purely at the request of Mama Bridgerton. There were no letters exchanged between them.

**

This is going to be multiple parts because it's gonna be a long one.

Stay tuned for part 2

Falling in Love

Lady Whistledown Reveal

Wedding & Aftermath

Part 3

Cressida's Blackmail

Love Confession

Epilogue

Part 4

How all of these changes affected the way the show storyline was written versus the book version.

Also, let me know if there are any other comparisons you want that I haven't thought to include.

[brekker-by-brekkerr]

https://www.tumblr.com/brekker-by-brekkerr/753275507770032128/theres-no-way-you-can-convince-me-the-writing-for?source=share

You being 21 and immature af explain a little bit but are you really telling me you think creasida is better than Pen??? Really??? Cressida, the woman who ridiculiza the fat girl in every Ball she sees her in s1 and s2*?? Cressida who step on Pen dress wheb she saw her finallg talking to a man??? Cressida who blackmail Pen??? Creasida who throw a drink in Pen dress?? Who said awful things to a fat girl???

Holy shit!! She is better than Pen???

I specifically indicated that I did not want Pen stans to interact with me or my posts because the ones who can't just go about their day after seeing an opinion different than theirs usually feel the need to be rude about it (like calling me immature when you're the one coming into my ask box to argue with me about an opinion about a TV show. If 21 is sooo young and I'm soo immature then move on).

Yes, I do think Cressida is better than Pen. (Also, I don't recall Cressida even mentioning Pen's weight when she makes rude comments to her.) Do I think everything she did was right? No, of course not, and I have not seen Cressida fans say so.

But let's unpack the difference in their actions and their motivations.

Cressida grew up extremely isolated, with a father who's awful, with a mother who drills into her the mindset that it's every woman for herself. This does not excuse her actions but it makes it very clear why she would behave the way she did. Her actions align with this mindset in the earlier seasons, until Cressida finally has one friend and you know what she does? She begins self-reflecting and changing her ways.

Pen has not experienced the same level of isolation as Cressida. Say what you will about Penelope's family, I get that they did not treat her as well as they should have, but her mother let her have her interests. She let Pen read, she let Pen go befriend whoever she wanted to. It would be one thing for Pen to feel overlooked and use LW as a way to voice her opinions like I've heard she does in the books, but it's another to use it as a weapon against other women, constantly harming others' reputations and making unnecessary digs at other people, like the comments she made ON THE DAY of the queen's grandchild's funeral.

Pen's actions have so much worse consequences for other people than Cressida's. Cressida, who is already being considered a spinster by others so her opinion is not valued as much, being rude during a ball does not have the same effect as publicly making comments about other women in a paper that people put so much value in. For example, Pen exposing Marina through LW almost led to Marina being on the street while pregnant. That is 100x worse than stepping on someone's dress. It does not matter that Marina being homeless wasn't the outcome, because just because Daphne stepped in and helped her doesn't mean that the harm wasn't done. If Daphne hadn't stepped in, then Marina's life would have been ruined. And Pen is out here taking shots in LW at people who have never done anything to her, like Kate and Edwina and Daphne.

Lady Whistledown's word matters to these people. Gossip and social standing are everything to these people, and LW's word is golden to them. Someone being mean in one moment in a ballroom does not have the lasting weight of something being published in LW and the show itself proves this time and time again.

Also, the writers make it very clear why Cressida blackmails Penelope. She is backed into a corner and is scrambling for a solution. She was about to be shipped off to live with someone who we're told is likely worse than her current awful family situation. Her entire life is crumbling around her and the one friend she has ever made has abandoned her. Pen could have afforded the original blackmail fee so it's not like Cressida was asking this unattainable awful thing of her.

So yeah. One person saying mean things to another, who shows self-awareness and growth as soon as she experiences positive female friendship and starts to learn that you don't have to see the world the way she'd been raised to see it, is nowhere near as bad as someone who uses her platform to continually tear other people's lives down.

Kindly please stop sending me these asks though because I made it clear that I did not want to talk with Pen stans about her and also have made sure to tag my posts properly.

[shysurvivor]

Ugh... So many thoughts on Bridgerton right now!!! I am still on Episode 6 of season 3 and argh! I had to pause my watching because I cringed a lot and it was making me sad. Because hello??? Eloise??? For two seasons you talk and talk about the unfairness of it all! The unfairness of young women being carted around like show animals just for old men to gawk at and now, your close friend in a terrible position and actively asking for your help and you? You ignore her! Like hello? Cressida is in a terrible position and she is asking you to help her escape this horror, a horror that you made clear is unacceptable in your eyes. And now that you could actively do something and help someone - you ignore it. You shove it away. Here is a young girl that made clear that she is about to be married off to an unacceptable man who will treat her like an animal and you don't even show an ounce of interest in that.

Like I get that it's difficult to drop a friendship. Breakups are always hurtful. And I also get that it is difficult to distance yourself with Penelope not only living nearby but also now engaged to your brother, but still, you discarded your friend in need right there. That is not okay. And why? Because you're still very hung up with Penelope, even though this woman betrayed you!

Like yes, Cressida is a bully. But so is Penelope. But Cressida tried to turn a new leaf and as far as I understood, she was actually sorry for her doings. She let herself be called out by Eloise and still maintained the friendship. The amount of growth she showed in the first part is amazing and I was really happy to see that Eloise was helping other women, empowering them, by giving them an example of how it is to be respected within your social environment.

(because Eloise never knew how it is to be constantly put down and reduced to social ideas about your sex - in her family this never happened and she always had a safe space from the outside there. Cressida didn't. Many other women didn't.)

But also, Eloise reminds me of me a little bit. She still mourns the friendship and is not able to let go. She is willing to drop Cressida in an instant but she still can't bring herself to tell Colin about his soon to be wife. Because in her mind there is still the hope that she can be friends again. And if we look at that, why is that? To be friends again with Penelope would mean that she changes her stance. She cut the contact because she said that the betrayal was unforgivable and that she couldn't believe Penelope would do that to her.

If she comes back to Penelope she would say that Penelope was right in the end. That Eloise herself had overreacted, especially considering that Penelope isn't really ready to face the facts of what she did, she is not really sorry about that and would do it again. In the end, Eloise would admit that Penelope can do whatever she wants with her. That she can abuse her trust, slander her in the public, use her for her own success etc.

But that's the thing with unhealthy relationships - you let them do that to you because they have a grip on you. You might not even be able to explain why that is but you still break boundaries you hold otherwise for these people. And that is terrible.

So yeah, I like Penelope and I like her and Colin. Especially in the show because the book-Colin was terrible IMHO, but if Eloise and Penelope are becoming friends again without Penelope doing a 180.... Well, then I really hate that!

[dusty-daydreams]

What bothers me is some people appear to think of Eloise as a "Not Like Other Girls" type of "feminist", which is not how I read her at all. I don't see her as thinking any less of other ladies, she just has nothing in common with them. Which is probably very lonely! And yes, unlike other women out in society, she does have the privilege of a family that will support her in spite of her radical politics, and she has been growing (and needs to do more growing) in her understanding of that privilege. (She can daydream about being a spinster because she can afford to be one.) But I've really liked her arc this season, with her trying to make new female friends even as she struggles to find commonalities.

I totally agree Anon!

Eloise is absolutely not a ‘Not like Other Girls’ woman. Just because she thinks differently than other people around does not make her a ‘Not like Other Girls’ because she (for the most part) doesn’t disparage other women when Francesca says she wants to take a “get it over with” approach to the marriage mart she is supportive. When she finds out that Penelope enjoys society and high society events, she indirectly apologises for acting in away that meant that Penelope couldn’t talk to her about it.

Plus for the most part her frustration is directed at men who view women as inferior, and at sexist systems.

I had hoped that this season would have had her continue to build on her progress last season when she began to realise she is not the first person to have these ideas, and in fact there is a brewing grass roots movement going on. That storyline could have continued without her visiting the radicals, by showing her reading things or talking to Benedict about the rights of the working classes or trying to discuss aspects of her feminism with Cressida. Like seriously I think queen bitch Cressida would be all for certain feminist ideals at the time like changing laws surrounding property ownership, and inheritance.

However I wish the show would have her family be more emotionally supportive towards her, like she has a comparatively very good home life, but it feels like most of her siblings treat her and her politics as a bit of a joke.

Which leads me to my other point, I don’t think the show actually knows what to do with Eloise and her feminism and they too often treat it like a joke. The show has become so unrooted from historical realities that the misogyny in the setting is extremely vague and changes to suit the plot, which makes having a character that is coherently fighting against that misogyny impossible.

Like Eloise went from arguing that women should be allowed to be admitted to university in season 1 when things were (a little bit) more historically grounded, to very vaguely saying that Women would have so much more time on their hands if they didn’t have to think about marriage all the time.

The devolution in the show is clear, in season 1, the alternate history was the removing of (certain types of) racism from admits English nobility and gentry, but the misogyny of 1813 was alive and well, women needed to marry because that was where her value and security was, women didn’t have alternatives to marriage for economic security. Now in 1815 and with the fantasy of the show taking over - women need to marry because what - that’s what she is supposed to do, and that social pressure is bad - but it’s not a true systemic problem?

Basically the show has lost any historical grounding it could have claimed to had, and as such Eloise’s feminism is just as vague as the misogyny she is fighting against. Which means that the show inevitably plays Eloise being a character in a Romance show that disdains romance a joke and not an interesting facet of her character the way it was shaping up to be in season 2

That said I did enjoy an Eloise cut off from a Penelope that pretended to care and agree with her politics, trying to make new friends, and trying to honestly engage in their interests.

[tangerinecherrygal]

Thoughts on Bridgerton S3 so far.

Under the cut for the sake of my poor moots and for spoilers. And first and foremost, I am a hater, so I will have some complaints but most are positive.

Positives:

Developing Cressida’s character. I’ve wanted this since I started watching with season 2. I love that she isn’t a cardboard cutout mean girl bc she gets shat on (deservedly sometimes) a lot by the main characters. Also I’m not sure which way they want to go with her character but I don’t think she needs any kind of redemption, maybe just a softening of her character.

Disabled visibility. It’s very clunky, but it is a step in the right direction.Period pieces tend to be worse than other types of shows and movies at erasing disabled people. It’s easy to forget that disabled people did exist and were apart of society. I can’t speak much to how they were treated, but this is bridgerton so it is very possible to portray them in ways that are realistic to the more modern experience of, say, being in a wheelchair.

Portia Featherington. Send tweet.

Benedict being a fun little guy.

Sibling dynamics of the bridgertons are really sweet to see and always make me smile.

Penelope serving cunt, intellect and agency.

Thr Mondrich family being on screen more. I’d love a side show on them like Queen Charlotte. Their relationship is so sweet and I am observing 👀 with upmost respect.

I do like Colin’s new look buuut… we will come back to this.

Francesca’s new actress is so talented. The shy girl rep that I need. She looks a lot like Phoebe and fits in perfectly.

The other stuff (and how i would change it)

Penelope’s makeover seemed rushed. I think her transformation should’ve been gradual as she gains confidence. Almost like Kate’s last season. She starts to reflect her confidence e gains throughout the season and i’m thinking that a fanfic may be brewing oh no.

Colin’s makeover is needed bc they had to downplay the actors beauty in earlier seasons. But I don’t see him as a devilishly handsome rake all of a sudden. Luke Newton has a kind and approachable (kind of baby) face and I think that they should play on that. A pretty kind of handsome instead of trying to immitate the more masculine look that they used for anthony. I know it’s because he is putting on a performance but I think they could have gona another way. His look in season 2 is great in my opinion, maybe if his clothing was more relaxed but he kept the same hair then it would be perfect.

They’re trying to convince us that he’s suave and smooth with the ladies but it’s not consistent with his character

The threesome scenes? Not a hundred percent sure who that was for. Sapphics let me know if you appreciated those scenes because I know they weren’t doing that for their famously large straight male audience. I also saw someone say it reduces the sex workers to props but in context that kind of works into the story so idk.

Colin went from being lost at the end of last season to gaining a sense of identity that isn’t implied to be an act.

Lots of side stories make it seem messy and wastes time that can go into understanding Francesca, Penelope, and Colin. Instead of focusing on stories like Lady Bridgerton’s romantic story they really should make a QS 2 where they can explore the older cast of characters.

Paaaaacinnng. Everything is happening so fast and the side stories mean that Polin doesn’t even make much sense to me. I don’t feel any chemistry. I’m not going to count how long they’ve been on screen together this season, but it’s not enough for me to believe that Colin finally sees Pen in a romantic way. The helping Pen find a husband quest lasted for a second and immediately he realises his feelings. I just don’t buy it. I almost want to cut away to horny ass Kanthony to see actual chemistry.

if anybody reads this and has their own takes pls comment. I love talking about the show and hearing what other people thought.

[rainwingmarvel7]

Sarra Mormont + Mabel Waters (kinda like a Catelyn/Jon relationship? like Larys came home with Mabel one day and was like “welp, here’s my bastard! take care of her now!)

Darren Lannister x Jenny Storm

I know I haven’t shared much lore about her but Nadya Dormaire + Cressida Westerling (Nadya as Jaime’s wife and Cressida as Darren’s? Or vice versa?)

Oooo ok I’m so here for all of these

Sarra + Mabel

Ok so I actually think that Sarra wouldn’t have that much of a problem with Mabel, to be honest. I mean, she wouldn’t necessarily be happy that his affair happened, but she wouldn’t be too torn up about it either. I mean, she’s got Gwayne so like who is she to judge.

I think she would maybe be a little resentful of having to take care of a child that isn’t hers at first, but she’d soften pretty quickly and take her in as her own. She might even try to push for her legitimization. I don’t really think she’d feel threatened by Mabel, and her own biological daughter Elyana is in a good enough position (I’m thinking she’s going to be betrothed to Daeron), that she’s not really worried about that either.

Honestly, I think she’d want to be the mother that Mabel doesn’t have, and also to make up for Larys just being Larys to her. She would protect her like she would her own child, and to her, Mabel is that.

Darren x Jenny

Oooo ok I see you with this one after the Victyr and Darren ask.

Going along with that idea, I think that Jenny would likely get involved with Darren to get back at Victyr for his blatant interest and preference for Sansa. I don’t know if she’d want a long term relationship - maybe she would, maybe she wouldn’t, it depends on how Darren treats her and what he wants out of it too, but she’d certainly be open to a fling at the least.

Nadya + Cressida

The bestest girls! I’m sorry but I love the idea of these two together being absolute besties. I think that regardless of which Lannister brother was married to who, Nadya would be very protective of Cressida because I get the sense that she’s a bit more outspoken and feisty than her, although I could be wrong. She would not shy away from lecturing her husband, that’s for sure. And she would always invite her to sit next to her at the Lannister family dinners which I’m sure are entertaining. But yeah I just think they’d get along wonderfully, and Nadya would have such a soft spot for Cressida, especially since they are in somewhat similar situations. I kind of need them to meet now.

[astridthevalkyrie]

the fandom don’t care about baby trapping bc why are they making fics and saying pen shoulve trapped Colin as joke? But when Marina was doing for her survival it was she’s the devil so see how it was never about Colin or wanting him not to be trapped and more so about them hating Marina bc she was taking away their little self insert girl crush like pen they was just jealous and bitter insecure girls! Bc wdym it’s fine if pen babytraps colin and he would’ve liked it 😂 oh polin so unserious

i mean like, fandom makes jokes i don't think that's a bad thing, even if they write it that's fine, but yeah if they do it and simultaneously think marina is the devil it's mmmm.

and of course there's self inserting into pen. but that's not bad either! i self insert into pen too, her scenes at the balls and parties are like man :/ being ignored and shunned and treated poorly at large events sucks majorly, having your mom constantly treat you like that sucks majorly too. i think people self insert into all the characters—daphne for wanting to be a mom, fran for preferring the quiet, kate and anthony for their older sibling plights, so on and so forth.

the thing is when it comes to characters like penelope, or even less bookish characters like mcu wanda or regina from ouat, is that fans relating to them leads to "this character did nothing wrong because society/other characters fucked them over first." and just to be clear, that's fine. i know a lot of people say "you can love a character but you have to acknowledge their flaws" ehhhh. idk. if you're just into a show for fun you shouldn't have to acknowledge a character's flaws to enjoy them. you kinda just can, it doesn't mean you agree with them whether you explain yourself or not.

but then it goes a step further into hate for other characters and that's when i get annoyed. i don't care that people love penelope, i dislike that i can't look at any bridgerton opinions without seeing blatant hate and misunderstanding of eloise and marina. i don't care that ouat fans love regina, i dislike the absolute insane takes on snow and emma twisting things around to make them the villains.

and when it comes to penelope specifically, yeah, her ending arc is very underwhelming. nothing happens which begs the question why she couldn't simply come forward last year when eloise was threatened or why she couldn't let eloise pretend to be LW for the queen's benefit. but even that is fine. it's fucking bridgerton, i didn't expect her to get consequences. my biggest problem besides fans' villainizing everyone but her, is that her redemption arc is sorely missing one thing—apologizing to marina. the actress couldn't come back, that's fine! just show pen writing a letter to her too when she wrote to violet and the queen. that is the biggest problem i have because penelope was a teenager when she revealed marina's secret. she was immature and childish and it's understandable, but she should apologize now that she's matured and understands that was wrong.

also maybe not punishing cressida for trying to escape marriage to an old man. idk.

[paintdlady]

SEASON 3 SPOILERS!

I do like how this season really underlines that it is Violet (and not Portia) who is the exception and not the example of how most mothers navigate their daughters through the marriage mart.

So often they pressure their daughters to find a match at the expense of forging meaningful bonds, Portia is just perhaps more heavy-handed in doing so (fueled by the precarious situation her family has found itself in compared to more well-to-do families). But she is still not so different than most other mothers we see, like Lady Stowell and more prominently: Cressida's own mother. And there are also all those that wished to impress Queen Charlotte so that their daughter might be this season's Diamond.

Many of them are very happy to engage in gossip (though it's more like a double edged blade as we see time and time again), and see the potential fall of a debutante as a golden opportunity - because that would mean less competition for their own child's potential prospects. It was particularly nasty to see the older women delightfully tear Penelope down for taking lessons from Colin, striking me much harder than when it was their daughters whispering. It's no wonder these girls learn these same habits in such a dog-eat-dog world, it becomes essential to survive the social culture they live within.

We don't get girls like Cressida in this society simply because she just enjoys being evil and cruel, and is a cartoonish villain rubbing her hands together menacingly. We get girls like Cressida because that is how their society functions and grooms these girls to continue turning the wheel that is their society. She learned it from her mother who doubtlessly learned it from her mother who likely learned it from her mother, and so on and so forth. It is a wheel that has been turning for decades if not centuries by that point, and exactly why Eloise's direct and bold resistance was not all that successful.

This season highlighted that so many of these girls are not so different from our heroines. All of them are just trying survive and live the best way they know how, no matter what shape that may take within a society that will stomp down and freeze out anything that dares to try resisting or rebelling too boldly.

And now, as we have reached the end of the first part of the season, I am left with a question of whether I am giving Portia too much grace in hoping she realized just how much she has damaged and hurt her girls despite being well-intentioned as a mother. Not only does Penelope flat out ask if she has no value if she is not engaged/wed to a lord, but none of the Featherington girls treat each other like family - so much so that Prudence and Phillipa are in direct competition with one another throughout this whole season so far. Prudence didn't even care a little bit when Penelope was upset after Debling ended their courtship. Did Portia in that moment finally realize just how lacking in warmth she raised those girls? How distant and cold and uncaring their family is to one another?

[crystalromana]

Apocryphia Bipedium- Ian Potter

[FIXED THE WONKY MOBILE EDITING. >.< IT LOOKED FINE ON DESKTOP]

[I am obsessed with this short trip so I had to bring it to Tumblr. Yes I did just copy and paste this page by page out of the pdf and formatted it. I think about it all the time. Anyway.

Apocrypha Bipedium takes place in the gap between Time of the Daleks and Neverland. Enjoy]

A Suggestive Correlation of The Cressida Manuscripts with other Anomalous Texts of the Pre-Animarian Era as proposed for Collective Consideration by Historiographic Speculator Anctloddoton.

In my selection and placement of the following extracts from the literature of the extinct worlds, I have attempted to draw suggestive parallels between some of the Problem Texts of the humanoid cultures. Obviously, the records of those times are now so fragmentary that any conclusions we draw from the surviving evidence must remain speculative. We cannot know what evidence we are missing, thus the linking of events posited by the presentation of these documents must remain a tentative hypothesis at best.

HS A From The Primary Cressida Document – Suppressed Texts of the Vatican Library, A Mysteria Press Original, 2973 CE.

The past is another country, the Doctor used to say. By which I suppose he meant it’s a nice place to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there, and you can have real problems with customs when you arrive.

I grew up in the future myself, which makes living in the past tricky at times. Liverpool was a great place to grow up if you were into the past though. It was full of it; the Campus Manor theme park, the castle, the Beatles Memorial Theatre, The Saint Francis of Fazakerley Museum, the Carl Jung Dream Tour, Post-Industrial Land and all those cathedrals, you were tripping over history everywhere. Mummy’s parents came from there too, so it was practically like we knew reallife olden days people.

It was much better than Liddell Towers where we lived in New London – most of the history near there seemed to be about some silly girl who’d let a professor of sums take photos of her and fell down a rabbit hole, or about those awful Daleks wiping out Southern England with mines and things. Much duller and hardly any variety in the rides at all.

Here in the actual olden days there’s not much past anywhere, just loads of future, and the rides are even less fun, all carts and donkeys and hardly any roads. We’re moving again, you see, dear diary. Even though the conquering Greeks don’t really seem to want to colonise any of Asia Minor themselves they don’t seem to want any Trojans settling back down anywhere round here either. They’ve occupied what’s left of the city, I suspect mainly so Menelaus can find all the expensive bits of Helen’s jewellery she seems to have mislaid, and seem keen we don’t hang about too nearby. Mymiddon Hoplites apologetically move us on now and again, clearly wondering when they can decently be allowed back home to start fighting amongst themselves again, and so we pack up and move. Some of their chaps are still feeling rather tetchy for no good reason apparently. Troilus says there’s a silly rumour going around that some terrible woman, probably a goddess, went around whipping up aggression amongst the Greeks a few years ago by magic, leaving marks on their necks that mean they can’t calm down!

It doesn’t make any sense to me. I think I might just be getting the cleaned up version of a soldier’s tale actually. I think that happens with me a lot. People treat me like a silly little girl sometimes, which isn’t really fair when I come from the future and know all sorts of things they don’t. I’m an adult now, even if not being born yet does make me about minus four thousand officially.

I don’t think Agamemnon’s Greeks really know what to do now to be honest, and after a decade’s anticipation I don’t think the trade routes or the princess they were sacking Troy to get are quite as good as they were hoping. I think they’re just hanging around stopping us settling down and looking for lost costume jewellery until they can think of something better to do. Some of the Ithacans are moaning it’ll be another decade before any of them get home at this rate. Bless them.

Running out of room, dear diary. Will write more when I have some new goats’ hides.

From Not Necessarily the Way I Do It! The True Confessions of a Ka Faraq Gatri not just written for the money when trapped on a primitive planet and needing cash to buy parts by ‘Snail’, Boxwood Books, 300 AGB.

Of course the hairy kangaroo had been at the mind rubbers and didn’t even realise the sword was there! How we laughed. Terrible namedropper, Zodin, but worth her weight in soufflé all the same

Naturally enough, mention of name-dropping reminds me of another anecdote, this one relating to dear old Bill Shakespeare, one of the finest writers and most atrocious spellers of any age. I’ve met him several times now and hope to again if I ever get off this pre-warp- engineering dustball. The last time was during that sticky business with poor Kitty Marlowe and those Psionovores from Neddy Kelley’s old scrying glass that I related in Chapter 9, but perhaps our most awkward misadventure together was the time I introduced him to some of his own characters, who included, as it happened, a dear, dear friend of mine.

From The Dairy of an Edwardian Adventuress by Charlotte Elspeth Bollard, Library of Kar-Charrat. The work, having suffered some worm damage in the Great 2107 AD Cock Up, is presented here in the Elgin decorruption.

Travelling with Wilf and the Doctor was a curious experienced already felt somewhat out of sorts with time, having discovered my very existence was making history split in two, but sharing a home with a boy from the 16th Century and a man who seemed to come from nowhere so much as his own imagination, merely heightened my feeling that I no longer belonged to any era.

We three fellow time travellers had so very little in common beyond having all read the plays the boy had not yet written that the small talk had been small indeed, and, after a few days of the Doctor failing to get Wilf home, the atmosphere had become a little tense.

Wilf, it further transpired, had difficulty reading anything written in more modern Anglish than his own, which meant there had been little of a literary nature to distract him during his sojourn with us once he had read and re-read the Doctor’s picture books about Frinchs, Sneetches, Ooblecks and Cats in Hams.

Thankfully, towards the end of Wilf’s stay with us the Doctor had discovered a futuristic version of Lido called Peter Pan Pop-O-Matic Frustration that we could enjoy playing together and those last long hibiscus-scented afternoons in his music room passed pleasantly enough, without young Wilf having to constantly relate the escapades of besocked foxes to us.

The Doctor always won our games, usually coming from behind implausibly late in the day, and nearly always using some devious subterfuge to gain victory. Indeed, it was observing the childlike joy on the Doctor’s face at his underhand triumphs on the Peter Pan Pop-O-Matic Frustration board that I first realised just how much of Peter there was in his nature. Naturally, we loved him enough to pretend not to notice his cheating (I sometimes think the whole universe did) and at times towards the end we three had so much fun that I almost forgot I was a paradox, unpicking creation like Penelope at her tapestry in the heroic age we had just left.

From The Pseudo-Shackspur – works attributed to William Shakespeare collated by Heinrich Von Berlitz and Leopold Kettlecamp, Ampersand and Ampersand, 85 AH.

This passage from The Noble Troyan Woman of Troy – fragmentary foul papers of a naive work once attributed to the very young Shackspur, is worth quoting in full.

Act 2, Scene 1. A room within the box. Enter Mistress Charley, Doctor Shallow and Young Will.

Doct. Here at last! Our journey finally through. In fifteen hundred and seventy two. Young Will, regard the ceiling viewing dome – Stratford on Avon, the Hathaway home.

Will. But sir, on those bare hills, no swarths do roll. And no houses nestle ’twixt those craggy knolls – The sun burns with a fierce un-English light And that beach there is not a Warwick sight! That’s not Stratford displayed above us

Char. – Lest the Avon’s turn’d to sea, ’Od love us!

Many scholars have disputed the authenticity of this piece of alleged Shackspurian juvenilia, pointing out, fairly, that it does appear to be the only one of his extant works that the Bard biroed in a twentieth-century school jotter otherwise festooned in swirly ink blots and doodled hexagons. However, if Shackspur did travel in Time, as several scholars suggest, this objection falls away. A more compelling argument for its inauthenticity is the verse style, experimenting uniquely within the Shackspurian canon with strict iambic pentameter composed entirely in rhyming couplets. Whilst dreadful, it is nothing like as appalling as that in Shackspur’s earliest known adult writing

***

From Tales from the Matrix – True Stories from TARDIS Logs Retold for Time Tots by Loom Auntie Flavia, Panopticon Press, 6833.8 Rassilon Era. Part of the Wigner Heisenberg Collection, The Mobile Library, Talking Books Section. Location currently uncertain.

The Doctor flicked the temporal stabiliser off and pulled down the transitional element control rod taking him out of the Vortex. Quite the wrong way to actualise and quadro-anchor even a Type 40 Time Capsule, isn’t it? Exiting the interstitial continuum at the perihelion of a temporal ellipse can cause serious buffering in your harmonic wave packet transference and sever your main fluid links, can’t it?

‘Here we are, Stratford on Avon, 1572!’ announced the Doctor proudly and wrongly. If he’d ever bothered to use his Absolute Tesseractulator to pinpoint his dimensional locations he wouldn’t have made these kind of mistakes, of course, but the Tesseractulator had never come out of its box, had it?

Charlotte Pollard, the Doctor’s friend, came over to him and flicked on the ceiling scanner.

A friend’s an Earth thing. It’s a bit like having a colleague or fellow student you co-operate with, but without any exams or project targets at the end to make the co-operation meaningful. There was a fashion for having them on Gallifrey at one time, ask some of your older cousins about it, they might remember.

Charlotte squinted at the view outside. It didn’t look like the Stratford she’d visited, with neither alien enslavers nor half timbered tea shops anywhere in sight. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked.

‘Positive. Ish,’ replied the Doctor. William Shaxsberd, a young man they’d promised to drop off in 1572, put down his coloured crayons and came to join them.

‘It does not look much as it once did, Doctor,’ said William, looking at the ceiling and cricking his neck.

The Doctor followed suit. The dustbowl outside was certainly not Warwickshire in any era he’d visited, ‘No. Indeed not,’ he admitted. ‘I think the rift in the Vortex is introducing a random element into my calculations.’

Do you remember the rift in the Vortex, from last time? That’s right, the Doctor made that too! It was due to the paradoxical interaction of two paravertical chronostreams further complicated by three retro- temporal augmented causal feedback loops, wasn’t it?

‘Another random element?’ asked Charlotte, ‘More random than the way you play “eeny meeny miney mo” with the buttons?’

‘Ha, Charley,’ said the Doctor. ‘Tres amusent.’

Charlotte turned to William to explain, ‘That’s French, Will, for “I’ve been banged to rights, Miss Pollard”,’ she said.

‘I somehow knew,’ William replied.

‘Really?’ asked Charlotte. ‘How?’

‘It’s a Time Lord gift, Charley,’ said the Doctor, ‘and yes it would be awfully de trop to ask how it works.’ Or at least that’s whatCharlotte thought he said. William heard something quite different of course.

Well, let’s get out there then,’ said the Doctor, opening the doorswithout taking any proper readings.

‘Er, why?’ asked Charlotte.

‘Because until we know how far out the rift has shunted us in spaceand time we won’t know how to get to Stratford, 15 diddlydiddly...’explained the Doctor, waving his hand vaguely as he searched hismemory for the end of the four digit number he’d lost interest in.

‘Seventy-two,’ prompted William.

‘The very same.’ The Doctor beamed, ruffling the young man’s hair in a way that, thanks to the TARDIS telepathic circuits alone, seemed endearing rather than insufferable and over familiar.

William and the Doctor headed for the doors. Charlotte was troubled though.

‘Won’t my temporal instability cause untold problems to wherever we are?’ she asked, quite sensibly, all things considered.

‘Oh, very probably, I expect,’ replied the Doctor airily, ‘but if you spent your whole life worrying about the consequences of your actions you’d never get anything done and the consequences of that would be unthinkable, wouldn’t they? Faint heart never bowled a maiden over,you know.’

Charlotte scowled. ‘Mind,’ added the Doctor as he stepped out of the control room, ‘neither did Katie “the Beast” Davies, if I remember my22nd-century Wisden correctly.’

That was an allusion to the Earth game Cricket, wasn’t it? It was the Earth’s planetary sport, despite the fact that humans were the worst players of it in the galaxy if you remember.‘

Doctor, I find your words confusing,’ said William as he followed him out.‘It’s a Time Lord gift, Will,’ Charlotte whispered. ’You’ll get used to it.’

* * *

From The Primary Cressida document

New hides! This keeping a journal business is awfully tricky when you’ve no paper around, but before mummy died, she did make me promise I’d write one when I eventually settled down. It’s a family tradition that’s been handed down for generations apparently, not that I ever saw mummy’s.

Anyhow, Troilus is still very eager to settle soon, but where? I’ve ruled out going east to the Holy Land because from what I remember from history and my travels we’ll get no peace there and the rest of the Med and Adriatic has already been bagsied. Troilus reckons Aeneas will have already have set up somewhere by now and we should have gone off on his boat when we had the chance. I just nod, and try to explain wave particle duality to the little ones.

I have a vague feeling I learned something about Aeneas from the UK-201’s didactomat box way back in the future. I think he ended up with Dido in Carthage for a bit, which confuses me because I thought Dido’s music was Late Classical, which must be after this period, surely. I’m sketchy on the details to be honest. I only remember it was Dido and not Sister Bliss because the planet we crashed into on the way to Astra was named after her.

Funny thinking about Dido, that was the place I’ve called home longest in recent years. I’ve been a nomad a while really – split between London and Liverpool as a girl, never knowing whether to talk posh and southern or not, emigrating to off-Earth with daddy, hopping about through Time with the Doctor, and now traipsing around Turkey with Troilus and his mates before its even called that or has any tourist facilities to speak of. I think I must have ‘space travel in my blood’ as one of those Baroque composers put it!

I’ve been wondering when I should discover electricity and plumbing a bit recently, these fleeces don’t clean themselves like proper clothes, so the sooner we can invent the twin tub the better. Are we before or after that Monk who invented things too early here, I wonder? I don’t want to mess things up like he did, but I’m shocking on dates. I just paid attention to the stories in the history books really, not the order they happened in. If I’d known the way round history went was going to be important I would have had the machine teach me it. Of course, as a child you never expect all that history around you is going to run away into the future like it has, do you? I’ve decided I’ll probably start with a steam engine and see if that messes up my memory of the future. The way I see it, it’ll be impossible for me to invent anything that’ll stop me being born so I can’t do too much harm.

I casually suggested making things out of iron the other day, which I know is a big step forward but everyone just laughed. Too brittle and hard to work compared to bronze or tin, they said. I suppose they’re right. You have to do something to it to make it strong, I remember that. I just don’t remember what that something is. For all I know my quad physics equations and could still compose a cogent analygraphfor the fall of the Mallatratt Protectorate, I’m a bit rusty on a few of the basics. Going to take us years to get garlic bread and sound radio at this rate.

Of course, I had a bit of training for life without the mod cons on Dido, so I can cope, but what makes things really fiddly at the moment is that my future’s past is catching up with my present, which is complicated enough to write down, let alone experience.

We’ve just bumped into the Doctor as a young man, and I’m sure it’s really bad form for me to let on I recognise him when as far as he’s concerned he’s not met me yet.

From Not Necessarily the Way I Do It!

My plan was pretty much the usual one, to go out and see if we could find out the year and our whereabouts in a way that wouldn’t arouse any suspicions, and then hang around until nightfall to get a better fix from the position of the stars. It may sound dull but I’ve found if I do that I usually find something or other to get embroiled in before sunset.

We stepped circumspectly out of the Ship and set off in search of the nearest habitation, ready as ever to improvise any number of cover stories to explain our presence and strange garb. As luck would have it we soon ran into one of the locals, and were able to subtly winkle out the info we needed on route to his encampment.

From The Dairy of an Edwardian Adventuress

People say you should never look back of course, advice we’ve been ignoring since Orpheus and EuroDisney, but I can’t help thinking that if the Doctor hadn’t landed us in the aftermath of the Trajan War a lot of that beastly business with the Time Lords might have been avoided later.

As usual the Doctor rejoiced in dropping straight into the middle of things without a moment’s forethought. Impossible, exasperating man,I tried to protest but somehow he just brushed my complaints away with a smiled shouldn’t have let him, but he did have such a lovely smile.

* * *

From The Pseudo-Shackspur

The Noble Troyan Woman of Troy

Act 3, Scene 2. Another part of the hillside. Enter Mistress Charley, Doctor Shallow and Young Will.

Doct. Yoohoo! Mister Goatboy, excuse me please, Could you tell me what time and place is this? Char. Discreet as ever.

Enter a Goatherd.

Doct. Yes, but awfully brave. Young man, there is information we crave. What land is this and what year are we in? We’ve lost track of both in our travelling.

Char. Oh I give up, you’re so inconsistent.

Doct. Just smile prettily, act like an assistant.

Char. But I never know what trick you’ll pull next!

Doct. Just grit your teeth, smile and stick out your chest; Magic’s best tricks work by misdirection.

Char. So I’m just here to stir his –

Will. Affection?

Doct. Quite so Will, a pretty face inspires trust. True, I’m afraid, if not awfully just. This chap will tell us the time and the place And Presto well head straight back into Space!

Goat. Eleven eight three BC is the year This is Hisarlik in Anatolia. I expect you’re traders from Phoenicia To be garbed and garbling here so queer. You’ve been ship wreck’d and concuss’d I’ll be bound. Which’ll be why you have no goods around. We must offer you shelter at the least Pop back home with me and well have a feast.

Char. How can he know he lives before Our Lord?

Doct. It’s just a translation device that’s flaw’d. It’s an awfully clever mechanism But it causes the odd anachronism. Kind goatherd, we would love to share a meal And watch the evening stars above us wheel. For by such means we will precisely know Our station now and where we next must go. Exeunt Omnes.

From Tales from the Matrix

‘Do we really need to do this?’ asked Charlotte as the band trudged wearily after the herdsman in their impractical shoes, ‘Surely the date and location he’s given you is enough?’

‘Perhaps,’ the Doctor replied, ‘but studying the stars will allow me to be more accurate. Besides, I’m famished. We haven’t eaten for minus three thousand years, bear in mind.’

So the Doctor and his companions blithely headed off into further temporal confusion, unaware that the goatherd had seen the TARDIS arrive and knew full well who the Doctor was already.

There’s a lesson there for anyone who thinks it’s clever to keep their TARDIS in one form, don’t you think? The Ionic Column factory preset might look nice, for example, but when using it means every Grun, Za and Caius in the Cosmos knows who you are immediately, it rather defeats the point of a chameleon circuit.

From The Primary Cressida document

One of our herdsmen saw the TARDIS arrive in the next valley this afternoon and instantly recognised it as the mobile temple that had prefigured the city’s fall, and the Doctor as a younger version of the old man from my tales.

He sent his mate back to tell us so we all had time to prepare ourselves and could all pretend we believed the Doctor’s implausible story about being a trader from Phoenicia when he turned up an hour or so later.

It’s definitely him, probably about 40 years before we met. He dresses similarly, his hair is curlier and darker and his face looks a bit different, but the years are never kind, are they? Amazingly, he’s almost as vague as a young man as he was when old, if not quite so ummy and erry. I’d always assumed that was because he was getting on a bit.

Thankfully, no one here’s too thrown by the idea of time travellers after me relating all my adventures to them, though one of the boys did ask me why the Doctor didn’t walk and talk backwards when his past was in the future. I was very clear why not when I started explaining it, but I must admit I got a bit confused as I went along. He hasn’t recognised me of course, dear diary, and we’ve invited him and his friends to have tea tonight.

From Not Necessarily the Way I Do It!

Well, imagine my embarrassment when we arrived at the fellow’s encampment and who was in charge but my old friend Vicki (now calling herself Cressida of course) and her new husband Troilus, who I’d never actually met, due to quite heavy escaping commitments around the time they got together.

I realised with a start that young Bill Shakespeare was due to write a play about this couple in a few years, and that unless I was careful thismeeting would almost certainly be what inspired it, thus complicating Bill’s already tortuous history further and bringing yet another new paradox to mine. I’d only let Vicki go away with Troilus at Troy’s fall because once I heard she was calling herself Cressida I’d assumed it was predestined (well, I was young, I believed in that kind of thing), I knew there was a play about the couple by Shakespeare and thought I was helping history take its course by hitching them up. Now, if I’d only done that because my future actions would one day bring that play about, I’d accidentally made a big chunk of my past dependent on my future, which, as you know, isn’t really the accepted way of going about things.

I reasoned it was vital for the tidiness of the time line that I kept Bill from learning the background of Troilus and Cressida in any detail, ideally forgetting as much of their present as he could too.

To complicate matters further, Vicki had actually seen Bill as an adult on my time telly, the Time Space Visualiser. She was never the most historically careful of girls, and I feared that if she found out who he was, she’d probably tell him all about his future at the court of Elizabeth and getting the commission to write The Merry Wives of Windsor and the inspiration for Hamlet on the same day and how he’d sprained his wrist in his rush to write both.

All it might take, I thought, would be one slip from any one of us, accidentally mentioning the words TARDIS or Zeus Plug over dessert, say, and causality would be tangled up like President Pandak’s kittens in twine, quicker than you could explain what you pop in a Ganymede socket.

Luckily, it seemed Vicki hadn’t spotted how anachronistic our garb was and hadn’t realised I was her old friend, seeming to completely swallow my inventive tales of sea faring, despite Charley’s rather fanciful insertions about hook-handed pirates.

I had, of course, underestimated her, as a quick and entirely accidental glance at her diary before dinner proved. Not knowing I could regenerate, she had taken me for my young self in my first form and thought she was protecting me from foreknowledge!

This, of course, suited my purpose. All I reckoned I had to do now to save Time from chewing itself to bits was keep Will busy and make sure Vicki didn’t relate her history to any of us over dinner.

Oh what tangled webs we weave, when tidy temporal strands we try to leave.

From The Dairy of an Edwardian Adventuress

Mr and Mrs Troilus seemed a sweet couple, he a lanky chap with a curly beard and a well-meaning expression and she a rather enthusiastic young thing with big eyes, yet the Doctor had become rather shifty from the moment we met them. I knew he was preoccupied by something, but I had, at that time, no idea what. After some fun, improvising tales of derring-do on the high seas to prove our credentials as traders, he took me to one side and explained that I had to get Wilf as squiffy as possible at the feast that night for reasons it was simpler at that moment not to explain. He said history depended on me getting the boy so drunk he could neither speak nor remember his behaviour the next morning. I’m normally quite good at that kind of thing, it was hardly my fault the Bawd was a functioning alcoholic at the age of eight.

From The Pseudo-Shackspur

The Noble Troyan Woman of Troy

Act 4, Scene 1. An encampment in the mountains. Enter Mistress Charley, Doctor Shallow, Young Will, a goatherd, Troilus, Cressida, divers villagers and guards severally.

Doct. Hello. (Aside) Her! ’Tis Vicki, I should have guess’d. I never with good geography was bless’d Hisarlik is the modern name for Troy. Quite a temporal tangle, boy oh boy! (To Cress.) Ha ha, my hearties! We here are sailors three. (Aside) I can but hope she does not see ‘tis me.

Cress. (Aside) Deceit upon deception! Can this be The Doctor who I first took it to be? Is this him when young as I assumed? Or must deeper deceit be presumed? I’ll play along until the truth I know. (To Doct.) Good mariners, welcome and hello.

Will. (To Char.) What’s this strange accented charade about?

Char. (To Will) Who knows, we’ll be, I bet, last to find out.

From Tales from the Matrix

Yes Time Tots, exactly! The first thing any of us would have done would have been to get out of there quickly before we compromised the causal nexus. Staying for tea and imbibing too much ethanol, which you’ll recall the Doctor had a particular weakness for on his mother’s side, doesn’t strike any of us as sensible!

From The Secondary Cressida document (a transcribed fragment allegedly found at a Church of Rome jumble sale) – Even More Suppressed Texts of the Vatican Library, A Hatper-Mysteria- Ellerycorp Press Original, 2977 CE

My ruse worked, the robot’s read my carefully exposed diary and thinks I suspect nothing! He’s so obviously not really the Doctor it’s not true, but he doesn’t know I know that yet, so we have the advantage. He’s definitely a Dalek robot double like that other one they sent after us.

They’ve probably made him the young Doctor this time to make it less obvious. He does look a bit like he could be him sometimes if you’re not paying attention, but if you look closely his face is all wrong and his voice goes a bit funny sometimes like that other robot’s did, almost doing my accent at times! I think he’s probably feeding on my jumbled memories or something.

We’ll overpower him and his companions at dinner tonight and destroy them, they won’t expect me to know how to deactivate them.

From Not Necessarily the Way I Do It!

I’ve always been keen on wine, particularly the heavier oaky reds, though I find there is a rather tiresome tendency for them to be drugged by villainous blackguards sometimes, rather impairing the subtleties of the flavour, but wine in the Homeric era was quite a different proposition. What can I tell you about it except that it tasted awful but did the job?

It wasn’t the heavily resinated stuff the Greeks later went in for, thankfully, nor indeed that watered-down muck the ancient Romans used to dish out at parties, but I think it’s telling that the most flattering thing Homer had to say about it in the whole of The Iliad was how like the sea it was in hue. When you bear in mind he was blind, you can tell he’d had to ask around a bit to find anyone with something positive to say about it.

The food wasn’t much better either. It can be terribly hard eating out when you travel like I do. These days at home, I generally try to eat only things that don’t have a central nervous system, or that I’ve knocked up in the food machine, but sometimes, when you’re a guest, qualms like that have to go out of the window, particularly on worlds ruled by intelligent plants, where you’re best advised not to ask for a celery stick and to just stick your toes in damp soil like everyone else at the table.

Even then I try to stick to my principles and not eat anything with a sense of self, parliamentary democracy or sultanas in it.

This dinner was a particularly awkward affair; Charley acting like a slightly sloshed pirate queen, Vicki acting like she didn’t know me, Bill acting up, singing lewd madrigals that officially weren’t due for invention yet in his rather reedy girlish voice, and all the while me worrying about causality falling apart around me rather too much to fully enjoy the dolmades.

Suddenly, half way through the proceedings, the impossible happened: it took a turn for the worse. Vicki shouted out ‘Now!’, and lunged at my chest and started tearing at my waistcoat.

From The Dairy of an Edwardian Adventuress

My recollections of the ensuing events are somewhat hazy; I had been struggling to match young Wilt measure for measure, you might say, when I saw the Doctor being attacked. I launched myself at his assailant and missed, I’m told, briefly losing my dignity and consciousness in the process.

A shocking melee ensued by all accounts, with Trajans tearing at our clothes with cutlery and all the usual business with tables being turned and the like breaking out; I’m only glad I can’t remember the full details, because what little I do makes me blush quite enough.

It’s quite possible I told someone I loved them, and was sick later too. I’ve never been brave enough to ask. The next thing I remember clearly was being in the main tent with the Doctor explaining a lot and me apologising a bit, just in case.

From The Pseudo-Shackspur

The Noble Troyan Woman of Troy

Act 5, Scene 2. At dinner beneath the stars.

Cress. Take that, false Doctor! But where are your wires? In sparks and puffs of smoke you should expire. Could it be that you are the Doctor true?

Char. Get your claws off him, he’s mine, you wild shrew!

Will. Oh, Pillicock sat on pillicock

Char. Will you stop that terrible singing, Will? The Doctor and I are under attack From this Troyan host, while you’re supping sack. Join in the scrap and cease your carousel Lewd songs, anyhow, douse all arousal.

Doct. Vicki, Will, Charley, all, put down those knives! You’re all making the mistakes of your lives.

Cress. Vicki, you say? You should not know that yet. If you’re the young Doctor, we’ve not yet met.

Doct. Vicki, the reason that I know your name Is that inwardly I am still the same Man who left you at Troy some years ago, I can change my looks, if you didn’t know. Char. Doctor, do you mean that you know this wench?

Doct. We travelled together many years hence. I think it’s time I explain’d the full truth Of why I’ve deceived you all, forsooth.

Will. If she’s an old friend then tell me why You did keep that fact from Charley and I?

Doct. This is an old friend, Will, but, what is worse, She features, in decasyllabic verse, In a drama that you shall one day pen That means I shall leave her with this Troyan, If you only write it because you’re here Chronological conundra appear. Effects and causes whirl and spin about, Go through the wringer and turn inside out. The egg that hatches out your chicken Does in that self same chicken thicken.

From Tales from the Matrix

Then in direct contravention of fifteen universal laws of Time and two local statutes, the Doctor sat down and explained everything that had happened, and, in explaining it, he brought all the things he was worried about happening that hadn’t into the open, didn’t he?

Of course, it turned out that some of the things he was worried about were of no concern at all, but as a result of relating them he brought worse problems about.

I expect most of you have read stories about the Doctor in other books, and I expect some of you think he’s quite clever, even though he breaks a lot of rules, don’t you? Well, you’re right! In a crisis, he’s just the kind of person you need around, he can come up with ideas almost no one else could. The only problem is, when you’re not having a crisis, he’s just the kind of person to cause one.

From The Primary Cressida document

How embarrassing. It turns out the Doctor was the Doctor after all, only older and with a new face for some strange reason. The girl who drinks too much is his latest companion and the little boy with the dirty songs and the voice like a girl is William Shakespeare! Nice enough lad, no wonder he ends up in the theatre with that voice though, perfect for all those drag roles they gave boys. We had a lovely chat about Dido and Aeneas and told each other about our scrapes with the Daleks, and I let slip the odd thing I knew about his future.

He’s told me we should go and settle in England. Apparently there’s an old book he’s read by a chap called Geoffrey that says relatives of Aeneas were the first Britons I think it’s a super idea, ’ I know Troilus will like it in England, and I think we’ve persuaded the Doctor too! Just think! could be one of my own ancestors passing on my secret diaries for years and years, a bit like mummy’s family did! How smashing would that be?

From Not Necessarily the Way I Do It!

Of course I decided in the end that honesty would be the best policy and that as long as everyone knew the full facts, and swore not to be influenced by them, we could probably darn the hole in causality in such a way that it wouldn’t show. I sat everyone down in the central tent and explained. Well, what a Charlie I looked!

*** From The Dairy of an Edwardian Adventuress

Ridiculously, the Doctor had been worried about Wilf getting inspiration for the play Troilus and Cressida from meeting the real Troilus and Cressida! I protested that Wilf had already read his own plays in the future anyhow, but the Doctor countered that they’d have been corrupted playing texts and in a court of law it would be hard to prove that was down to him, whereas if Will had got any of the plot or characterisation directly through his adventures with us that was a bit more serious.

That was when Will started laughing.

From The Pseudo-Shackspur

The Noble Troyan Woman of Tray Act 5, Scene 4. A tent in the camp.

Will. But Doctor, I did not invent the tale Of Troilus and Cressida’s love that fail’d. Why, Geoffrey Chaucer told it years ago! I cannot believe that you did not know. Have you read even half of what you claim Or do you just like dropping well-known names? Cressida’s tale is part of tradition Not the result of my precognition Of future perfect past present events, If you will forgive me my mangled tense, And my quondumque futures version Should have put you off this girl’s desertion.

Char. You should have read your Brodie’s Notes on Will. The phantom threat you feared from his quill Was nothing but an insubstantial shade, And there’s a real spectre here I’m afraid. I’m half a ghost of Christmas yet to come, Remember, I’ve made history come undone. You’ve got paradoxes enough to be Getting on with, as far as I can see, So why do you search for new ones instead That only exist inside of your head?

Doct. If I had known the work of me laddo Would I have found menace in my shadow? I here resolve to watch much less TV And be the reader I do claim to be. For half my erudite orations Come straight from books of quotations.

From Tales from the Matrix

‘What was Helen of Troy actually like then?’ asked William Shaxberd as he helped himself to more wine.

‘Is,’ corrected the Doctor, prissily.

‘She’s a good egg by all accounts,’ said Vicki, politely not mentioning the fact she thought her looks had gone, ‘and Menelaus was happy enough to have her back, even after all the bother, so she must be quite nice when you get to know her, I suppose.’

‘Well, she would have to be a good egg really,’ said William, ‘Her father was a swan supposedly.’ Like most young human men of his generation, he knew the salacious bits of Greek Mythology surprisingly well.

‘Half human on his mother’s side?’ smiled the Doctor, thinking himself clever. ‘Aren’t we all?’

‘No, just men,’ said Charlotte through a falafel.

‘She has two birthdays they say, one when the egg came out of her mother and another when it hatched,’ Troilus revealed, leaning forward over the table and whispering in that conspiratorial manner people sometimes do when divulging well known but dubious trivia.

‘It would have been an easy birth if she was born an egg,’ said Vicki ruefully, one hand on her stomach.

‘An easy lay, you mean,’ William corrected.

‘So Paris said –’Troilus began, his eyes a twinkle.

He was shouted down by his wife seconds later, barrack room tale untold, and one of those awkward silences ensued that dinner party guests in all cultures and times know only too well.

‘Have you actually read Troilus and Cressida, Doctor?’ asked Charlotte a little later.

‘You ask me, who had a hand in some of Shakespeare’s finest work – who put the mixed metaphor in the “To be or not to be” soliloquy, who hired the bear for The Winter’s Tale, and who really shouldn’t have passed on the story of A Midsummer’s Night Dream, if I’ve read Troilus and Cressida?’ replied the Doctor, rather over-egging it in that way he usually did when he was on the defensive.

‘Yes!’ they cried as one.

‘Well, no,’ admitted the Doctor. ‘It’s supposed to be one of the better ones, and well, you know, I’ve been busy. I’ve still not managed to tune the Time Space Visualiser in to catch all of The Golden Girls and I’ve been trying for decades.’

‘She doesn’t end up with Troilus in it, she ends up with Diomede, andit’s set during the war not after it!’ said Charlotte patiently.

‘Diomede! That was Steven!’ Vicki laughed.The Doctor looked confused. ‘Vicki and Steven were just friends,weren’t you? Just the odd haircut and getting locked up together, Ithought.’

‘Yes, that’s right, how many times do we have to go through that?’Vicki explained, giving a petulant Troilus a peck on the cheek.

‘Well the legend must have got a bit confused by the time it gotwritten down I think Chaucer got it from a foreign book,’ said William,draining his goblet.

The Doctor beamed, thinking he’d got away with his tinkering again.‘So Troilus and Cressida weren’t predestined after all!’ he said

‘Well, only because of your lack of reading,’ snorted Charlotte.

‘Oh that is a relief,’ said the Doctor taking the wine jug from William and helping himself without asking.

‘Now what about this business of giving us charts to help us reach this Britain young Will spoke of?’ asked Troilus, passing the Doctor a goat’s cheese nibble.

‘I really shouldn’t,’ explained the Doctor. ‘If you go there, on the basis of the frankly dubious history of Geoffrey of Monmouth then Vicki is in danger of becoming one of her own descendants, which is at least as badas the things I’ve been trying to prevent all day.’

‘Oh go on Doctor, please!’ begged Vicki. ‘We could mine tin in Cornwall and I’d promise not to invent anything I shouldn’t as long as I lived, not even roller skates!’

‘I don’t think I should. I’ve made enough of a mess looking after young Charley here, the repercussions of me sending you to Britain because the unborn Shakespeare suggested it could be horrendous,’ said the Doctor, finally being responsible for once in his lives.

‘Oh go on Doctor, I’m unborn too, remember, so that shouldn’t matte rmuch,’ said Vicki.

‘And I’m only half here,’ said Charlotte grimly ‘Why stop messing about now? You should have stayed at home watching these Golden Girls of yours if you weren’t prepared to get involved in real people’s lives. They’re messy and not always in the order you’d like and sometimes too short, and they’re not always better for having you in them, but you either face that or hide away somewhere, don’t you?

’The Doctor kissed her.

‘What was that for?’ asked Charlotte.

‘To shut you up,’ he said. He tapped Vicki on the nose and smiled,’Come on, let’s carry on the party, and in the morning, when rosy-fingered Dawn has done her bit, we’ll sort out a good map of Europe for the Trojans and get them started on their boats. Any consequences which haven’t happened yet we can worry about later!’

Some of you will be shocked at just how naughty the Doctor was in this story: jeopardising the stability of all those will-have-might-have-been futures out there depending on him by interweaving all those strands of destiny connected to the Dalek race and all on the basis of a whim.

The Doctor already knew Dalek causality was partially snagged in a loop in Time and his friend was the focus of a temporal anomaly, but of course he had spent a jolly long time in the Vortex, hadn’t he? That meant his causal connections to events future, past and maybe- somehow were a great deal more jumbled up than most people’s and he was quite good at judging just how likely to snaggle the Web of Time his whims might be.

Or so he thought.

The Doctor believed in two very wrong things you see; firstly, in something he called personal morality that he thought was more important than doing the things simply everyone knows are right, and secondly, that he was cleverer than everyone else and could always sort things out.

He deserved what happened to him next, didn’t he?

Document from the Braxiatel Collection Shakespearean Ephemera wing, a note found in the effects of William Shakespeare by literary assessor Porlock. It is not believed to be in Shakespeare’s hand though it bears some graphological similarities to the disputed Scarlioni Hamlet manuscript.

List of things not to mention

The Daleks,

That you’ve met me before when we meet next (because you didn’t mention it last time, you know),

That you’ve read half your plays already

That I wrote all the good bits in Hamlet, [‘good bits’ later amended to ‘rubbish bits’ in a different hand]

The idea of cigars (until Raleigh gets back from abroad),

That cigars will end up named after some of your characters,

That someone called Raleigh will go abroad,

That Troilus and Cressida had a lovely marriage and lived happily ever after in Mousehole, no matter how the story goes in Chaucer,

Oh, the places you’ve gone and the things that you’ve seen

[sumsebien]

by design pt.2 // Prince Friedrich

series masterlist

summary: one room and two very confused individuals.

word count: 3.6k

warnings: none

a/n: don’t ask me how. i don’t know either :) (edited: i added another scene yall)

Friedrich stood awkwardly next to the coffee table, looking out the window while you sat on the couch all the way across the room from him. A queen-sized bed splitting the space into his side and yours that none of you were willing to cross.

“The weather-“ Friedrich began, taking a quick peek outside, “-is lovely, don’t you think?”

“It really is.” You were just going to say that.

It had been 15 minutes and that was the first thing you had said to each other after the doors were closed. Both of you were longing for lunch time to arrive for an escape, any escape from this tragic situation you felt developing.

“I-“

“I-“

“Oh, you were saying?” he asked.

“No, nothing. You?”

“I was just-I think I’ll head out for a minute. Check on where the rest of the luggage is.”

It was confirmed. He absolutely despised your guts. That was not his job. A Prince never had to check on anything. If he wanted to stay, there was nothing that could stop him. Not even some stupid luggage. He must be leaving because he didn’t want to stay in your company any longer.

“Oh, of course.”

Friedrich gave you a small smile, walking towards the door with the least amount of elegance anyone had ever seen. His legs didn’t even feel like they were even his. There went all of his posture and diplomatic training.

As the Prince, he was forced to sit in numerous lessons on the art of making conversation and had to put it into practice almost immediately at dinner with his father. At Cambridge, he spent three years studying international relations, different societies and their interactions.

But somehow, the weather was the first thing he talked about. It was such a poor attempt that he was absolutely certain you found him dull. Even he thought it was dull.

And the walk? He could not explain where that came from. He was a giraffe who suffered an identity crisis and had no awareness of its legs.

There was no way in hell he was going to make you suffer through this the entire day. He thought as he asked his guards to find Heinrich. He was going to fix this.

Lunch had passed and soon came time for dinner.

You sat and watched the plate of beans, stale bread and soup go cold. It wasn’t because you were a picky eater by any means or that you held some sort of contempt for people less fortunate than yourself. It was none of that. It was the voice inside your head, feeding you paranoia every second that passed.

He would probably walk than sit on the same train as you. Remember his face? And the small talk that he kept having to make? Probably did not think you were worth any real conversation.

You stood up abruptly and then sat down again, the skirt of your dress rustling with your movement. You huffed, staring out the window with no intention of admiring the landscape. You just needed something else to think about. But there was simply nothing other than this.

Just as you were about to call your maids in to clear away the food, you heard a knock on the door. Careful this time, you stood up and told whoever on the other side to come in.

It was Friedrich. You scanned his expression with caution, hesitantly. He wore a gleeful grin on his face, his eyes gleaming. The happiest you had seen him. But it was fleeting, quickly wiped off when he saw your face. Were you that terrible?

He took a glance at the neglected tray and then back up at you. “Was the food not good?”

“Oh, I just wasn’t hungry.”

“Your lady’s maids are just outside. Would you like anything? Fruits?”

You shook your head. Through the gap he left, you could see Lea and Ilse’s figures. You walked past him to the doors, calling them in.

Once they saw your face, they immediately rushed into the room, curtsied to the both of you and took the tray away. You just stood next to the door and gazed aimlessly at the floors. Friedrich who was impressed turned to you with a remark that completely missed you.

“Yes?” you asked again.

“Nevermind that,” he smiled, “I have found a solution!”

“What?”

“A solution to our problem,” he gestured between the two of you. A glimmer of hope flashed in front of your eyes, so close that if you had reached out your hand you would have caught it. Your heartbeat hastened, your fingers clenching around themselves.

“I have rented out a compartment for myself. It should work perfectly well! You can have this room!”

Whatever else he said blew away. You heard none of it.

You could still see perfectly clearly though. A smile plastered on his face, his lips moving so fast you could not make out what he was saying even if you tried. He seemed so cheerful, so satisfied with himself that he had dealt with this, with you.

You blinked at him, your arms going limp at your side. Were you so despisable? That he had to leave the entire day just to figure out how to get away from you?

But where is the surprise? Even your own parents struggled to love you. All your life you had to live everyday knowing you were undeserving. Undeserving of your father’s pride from the moment you came into the world a girl. Undeserving of your mother’s affection for not being foolish enough. And undeserving of your betrothal’s tolerance. Not likable enough. Not pretty enough. Not Daphne or even Cressida.

“Y/N?”

His voice brought you back. You quickly ducked your head, rubbing away the tears that were gathering at the rim of your eyes. “Yes. Thank you.”

He paused, tilting his head to try and match your faze. “Is something wrong? Did I offend you?”

You waved him off, turning the corners of your lips upward in a show of pretend. “Not at all.”

“You’re crying.”

You sniffed. “Allergies. I apologize.”

You opened the door, “I believe your compartment awaits you. I will be completely fine, I promise.”

He walked over to the door, prompting you to take a step back and clicked it shut before you. “No,” he said, “there is something wrong. It’s my fault, isn’t it? You can tell me. I won’t be offended.”

You walked away from him, your back to him. “There is nothing wrong. There is nothing else I can say.”

“Y/N. I know you don’t trust me. But we are to be husband and wife-“

You spun around, all of your control gone. “Then why won’t you treat me so?”

Friedrich stared at you, unblinking.

“I know I am not who you expected. I am not who anyone expected,” you laughed bitterly, flicking your eyes up towards the ceiling to blink back the tears. “That much I know very well.”

“Y/N-“

You stopped him with the shake of your head. “But you must know that it is not my choice either. You don’t want to be in the same room as me yet you won’t let me leave.” Your fingers had been gripping on the fabric of your skirt. So tightly that it hurt when you yanked them away, throwing them in the air. “What must I do then? Disappear?”

“Y/N. Why do you think I did that?”

You sighed in exasperation. “You despise me!”

When your lungs were gasping for breath was when you knew you were done. Your breaths became deeper, easing the burning in your lungs but not the burning you felt in your heart. You took your time to watch him, really observe. His lips were pressed into a line as he watched you with pained eyes. Your words had slashed him but you did not know that. You did not think he would care.

Finally, he spoke, his voice barely louder than a summer breeze and calmer than a pond on a windless day. “I don’t despise you.”

“Y-you don’t...?”

He shook his head. “I got us separate rooms and I am giving you your space and your freedom because you clearly did not have in England.”

“I-“

“I didn’t have any freedom growing up either. People have a lot of input in my life. I know what it feels like to be an outsider in my own body, to want to run away and be myself. I may not have had it as bad as you but I still understand. And I am trying to give you your freedom.”

You stumbled onto the chair behind you and sat down. Friedrich sat across from you. The rounded coffee table was the only thing between you. He leaned against the arm, looking at you like he always did. But only now that you realized what exactly it was that he held in his gaze.

Sympathy.

“I am sorry if I made you feel like I despised you. Because that is not what I am trying to do.”

“No. I am sorry. I shouldn’t have lost control of myself like that. I obviously don’t know you enough to assume.”

An idea flashed in his eyes, he sat up, that excitement filling his blue eyes again. “How about we change that? I want to get to know you. And I will tell you whatever you want to know about me. Does that sound fair?”

“Fair.”

...

You were both painfully aware that there was only one bed. The both of you eyed it, wondering what you were supposed to do. It wasn’t as if any of you had any intention of doing anything other than talk. Right?

Well, you’d be lying if you said your mind wasn’t going somewhere else.

You didn’t know about him but you had been preparing yourself mentally for your wedding night ever since your mother gave you the talk. You just never thought that the first time you would share a bed with a man, your husband for that matter was to talk.

It was not that you were disappointed. You just did not know what to do. Somehow, this was more awkward than the ballet performance your father made you perform for his siblings and their children at Christmas. If there was ever a competition amongst the most humiliating instances in your life, that one would win, well, would have won.

“I will sit in the chair, you take the bed,” Friedrich decided.

It didn’t take a genius to see that the little wooden armchair was not going to be comfortable for him. Hell, you yourself had difficulty relaxing against the bumpy wooden backrest. He was essentially twice its height and had much more muscles than you. He simply would not fit.

“No, if anything, I’ll sit. It’ll be more comfortable for me.”

He quickly shut that idea down with the shake of the head. “No, I simply cannot allow that.”

“Why not?”

“Well for a start, I started this mess. You shouldn’t have to suffer the consequences-“

“I started it too!”

“You weren’t the one who placed a bet with my father, were you?”

“Bet?” What bet? He never told you about any bet?

Friedrich could see panic slowly rising in your eyes. He hadn’t meant to say it like that. It sounded as though this was all a game to him. You were probably thinking it was at that very moment.

“I,” he began, searching for the right words for a moment before he continued, “my father always wanted me to marry someone of his choice. It wasn’t ideal for me, I had had my freedom. I wasn’t going to give it all up. So I made a deal with him. If I ended up married at the end of the season, he would not be able to intervene.”

“But you weren’t married.”

He nodded.

Quietly gazing at the ground, you said nothing else and just sat down on the edge of the bed. Friedrich couldn’t see your eyes but he began to worry he had offended you.

Of course, he did. What was he thinking? He basically said marrying you was akin to being in a cell. He might as well have said that. What was the difference really?

Then, out of the blue, you apologized. An apology which felt wholly unnecessary. It sent him into a daze. “W-whatever are you apologizing for?” It was you who deserved an apology.

“I’m sorry,” you repeated, looking up, “about Daphne and about your father. I’m not sure I could have pulled myself together as well as you did at our wedding if I were you.”

Wordlessly, he sat down next to you, the both of you staring straight ahead. He didn’t think he handled it well at all. He just showed up. But then he decided against saying anything lest he ruined the conversation again.

After a little while, you turned to him with a question. “You loved her, did you?”

If you had asked him that question a couple of days ago, before he met you, he would have said yes immediately. He was very certain that he loved Daphne Bridgerton. But now that you were in the mix, he had other feelings to compare whatever he felt with Daphne to.

With Daphne, there was attraction. A lot of it. Perhaps so much that it had temporarily blinded him. There was also the pressure of the bet. Once he found someone he felt like he could love, he made the leap.

But something was amiss. There was always a concern that they wouldn’t quite connect on a deeper level. He knew that if he were to be having this conversation with Daphne instead of you, he wouldn’t have shared so much about his relationship with his father.

Yet, with you, he just knew you would understand.

“Did you love Simon?”

You shook your head, your eyes on your hands. “No, I didn’t. Not in the way I wanted to. I barely knew him. My parents did though. They were pushing me towards him when you and Daphne began to court.”

“And if they had asked you to marry him, would you have?”

The corners of your lips curled up ever so slightly. “I don’t have any other choice.”

Ever since that day at the abbey, he had suspected that this arrangement was forced upon you as well. Having it confirmed by you, however, saddened him. For you, it was never a question of this or that. It was either you did as you were told or you suffered. At least, he had a shot. You never did.

“I have no say in anything. Not even with my own performance at family gatherings,” you added, swinging your legs back and forth gently. The small smile on your lips lightened the mood. It made him smile as well.

“Me neither. It was quite the embarrassment.”

“I once fell flat on my face at Christmas trying to perform a ballet.”

“You did?”

You nodded. “And then I laid there. Like a log of wood.”

“That is still not as embarrassing as the time I got an awful grade in arithmetic. And came lunch time, it was splattered all over the papers: ‘Prince Friedrich does not know how to count.’“

You tried to hold back a laugh. But you couldn’t, your entire body was shaking with laughter. As a last attempt to save some grace, your hand flew to cover your mouth. A habit you had formed over the years living with a strict mother. Well, you weren’t sure if there was any grace left but it certainly sounded less like a hyena and more like a hyena with a rope around its mouth.

Friedrich couldn’t care less though. Very quickly, he joined you, leaning forward with a chuckle.

You found yourself looking at him and thinking how nice his laugh sounded. It wasn’t obnoxiously loud like the ones that echoed all across the estate during one of your father’s dinner parties. It wasn’t too perfectly staged either. It was simply a delightful sound. A laugh anyone would be jealous of.

When the room returned to its familiar silence, his arms accidentally brushed yours. The unexpected graze was so brief that you didn’t think he even noticed. You, on the other hand, were very aware.

To mask your increasingly reddening cheeks and clammy hands, you opted to carry on with the conversation. “I guess gossip papers truly are everywhere.”

“For an appetite so voracious, it is only fair. At Buckingham, everyone reads Lady Whistledown.”

You paused, shaking your head to yourself. “You read Lady Whistledown?”

“I must admit it is quite entertaining when it is not your name on the front page. You read it too, right?”

“Of course!” you grinned,” I am not allowed to but I find my ways. Who could dare dream of missing out on London’s latest?”

“So what are you allowed to read?”

“Nothing. Which is why I read everything I can get my hands on.”

You then continued to recount your late night adventures sneaking into the library. You seemed so proud that he couldn’t help but smile and nod along.

There was also that sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as he learned more and more about your upbringing. You seemed to know that the nonsensical rules your parents imposed on you were unusual too. But somehow, you had learned to accept it as nothing more than a fact of life. You never spoke of them or referred to them with spite. Certainly not had the same sour taste that Friedrich had on his tongue everytime he spoke about his father.

The Duke and Duchess of Clarence were damn lucky to have you as their daughter. They certainly did not deserve it though. He thought bitterly.

...

You and Friedrich ended up in bed, talking all night.

By the time dawn was on the horizon, you had both finished recounting your childhood tales, leaving nothing behind. In the end, the two of you found in this complicated arrangement so much more than either of you could bargain for. A confidant.

“Who is to say the betrothed can't be good friends?” Friedrich said, leaning against the headboard as he looked up at the ceiling.

You laughed. “Not us apparently.”

“Would you be able to promise me something?” He turned his head to look at you.

If there was one thing Friedrich learned after hours of conversation, it was that you were the best friend he had never had. And he was not going to let that go. Not even for his own feelings.

“Yes?”

“That we will remain friends even if we can’t love each other like we should.”

You grinned, sticking out your pinky. “Promise.”

...

Dear sister,

Everything is in order. All that is left to be done is for my ‘Diamond of the season’ to produce a male heir....

Bernadine closed the letter and stuffed it in her trunk of clothes at the faintest sounds of footsteps echoing in the hallway outside. Putting on the sweetest smile, Bernadine made sure she was the first thing he saw coming into the room.

“Good evening, your Majesty. How was hunting?”

The King entered the room swiftly, slamming the doors behind it. She did not jump, immediately following him and helping him with his cloak.

“Didn’t catch anything,” he said, shaking off his muddy boots onto the floors. “The weather. Too gloomy and rainy. Scared off the deers.”

Bernadine hung the fur cloak up. While the King disappeared into the bathroom, she quickly closed the blinds, of course not missing the bright blue sky and the royal garden bathing in sunlight.

“Yes, the weather has been absolutely terrible these past few days.”

When he came out of the bathroom, she made sure to cling onto his side, steering him towards the desk. “Are you feeling better, my love?”

“Much. Made sure the train stayed right here before I left. Good luck travelling with the lower-class, son.”

The King began to cackle uncontrollably at that, even had to sit down at one point. And Bernadine made sure that he sat right before the stack of paperwork sent for him this morning.

“That is a genius idea!”

“I know it was. What is this?”

“This is everything that needed to be signed while you were gone.”

The King cleared his voice, taking his quill and began to scribble his name on every page. Even the one that had nothing to do there along with the more important national matters.

A contract.

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[mermaidsirennikita]

the fans would gang up on me for saying this but i hope sophie is a man 🤞🏽 and i think there might be a good chance because making her a woc would be problematic all things considered and making her a white woman wouldn't interest the general public because like... let's be honest their story is overdone. plus they keep pushing the idea that the show is 'diverse' and having 2 seasons with the main ships being white + m/f is a bad look.

but i guess considering the way they're treating their s2 leads maybe they're completely dropping the 'caring about diversity' act haha

Nah they would gang up on you because I’ve been saying that I’d be down for a male Sophie since s1 dropped and they threw virtual rotten fruit at me on Twitter lol…. And I ain’t even talking about this show on Twitter. I was thinking for a minute that there was a fair chance that it might happen simply because it seems so regressive to have a romance show be that straight in 2022, but the fact that they’re showing Benedict with a random lady in the teaser makes me think they’re doubling down on ladies for him. Now, he could totally still be bi! And honestly, if s2 somehow really flopped or gets a lot of negative attention for its handling of race, I could see the potential for them throwing a Hail Mary and going with bi!Benedict in order to reinvigorate interest. I know that’s cynical, but I just have so little faith. I realize that a lot of Benophies think that there will be a Sophie sighting in season 2, but I honestly don’t think she’s been cast. Not after they made such a big deal about casting Simone (those were the days). Maybe they’ll have a double in a mask, but idk. I think they’re putting a lot of faith in the people running this show. Plus, CVD is leaving after this season—I feel like some decisions are probably going to be left to his successor.

Sophie being a woc…. I’m of two minds about. I see the people out there saying that they’d love a Sophie that looks like them, and that would be so great…. If the rep is good, which as we’ve seen with the India plot, isn’t guaranteed. And Sophie’s backstory makes that even more complex. I think there’s valid reason to think that the Cowpers may take the place of her stepfamily in s3, as Cressida’s mother is named Araminta, the same name as Sophie’s stepmother, and it’s easier to have established bitches take the role than to cast new people. So we’ll most likely have a Sophie as this servant to an abusive white family. Do we… really…. Think this show can handle that with a woc? Because I don’t even know if they could handle that with a white girl.

And then I see people who I know have identified themselves as white going “I think for the sake of diversity an East Asian Sophie would be great” like…. Idk man? It gives me this vibe that poc are viewed in a Pokémon, “gotta catch em all” way by some. I mean, it doesn’t give me a vibe, I know that there are white viewers and white creatives with this perspective, and it is gross. It also plays into this idea that like, a post-racial utopia is a world where we all have interracial relationships and there are no cultural divides or difficulties and we all have mixed babies and love conquers all. Which is…. Basically the thesis of the show anyway, and it’s simplistic and patronizing and fetishistic. But that doesn’t make it less fucked up that every season up to Our True Heroine Penelope’s is a Bridgerton having their mind blown when an exotic~ poc sails into their lives and teaches them about sex and love and eating food that isn’t boiled potatoes. (Lol if Kate and Edwina introduce Anthony to vindaloo this season, I will fall out.).

It’s like… you can have two white leads and care about diversity. First off, diversity isn’t just about it race…. Sexuality and gender matter too. If the show is supposed to be an ensemble anyway, there’s even more opportunity to represent historically marginalized people. You can’t just put a poc with a Bridgerton and say haha, diversity problem solved. To me it’s like, do the work well or don’t do it at all. Your half-assed diversity attempts are probably? Worse? Than not trying it at all. Like, I don’t think Kate will be a total wash this season but imagine if she’s literally just a stereotype. Imagine if they’d put Simone in a sari in a sea of regency girls, told her to put on an Apu accent, and had all of her dialogue limited to EXOTIC INDIA. What would be worse—a white Kate, or that? If Sophie is a woc who is basically enslaved by a white family before being saved and then kinda harassed by her white employer…. Is that better…. Than a white Sophie? I honestly can’t say because I *am* white, but idk, based off of what a lot of South Asian viewers have voiced about their concerns re: Kate…. It’s looking pretty complicated.

[talkfastromance4]

2.) Without Me--Ashton Irwin ‘Lovers in a Song’ series

a/n: So while each ‘chapter’ is titled after a song it’s more of the mood and a few choice lyrics that really made the story. This story changed a lot as I wrote it but in the end it all flows really nicely together. I’m so excited to share this with you! Each part is 3,000 with the exception of the last part. Please don’t hesitate to send me messages, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Word count: 3k

warnings: casual drinking, unprotected sex, fingering, slight angst 

Masterlist

LIAS masterlist

***

5 Years Ago

It’s raining cats and dogs on campus, the last night before graduation and Ashton is at one of the dive bars he frequented over his four years at school. There’s hardly anyone here and he’s staring at the bottle with his initials scrawled in golden loops with morose. After tomorrow when he walks across the stage, Ashton will take over the family whisky business. It’s been set in stone and passed on from generation to generation. It’s his namesake and his destiny.

“Go away! I don’t want to see you ever again and thank God after tomorrow I won’t have to!” A shrill voice erupts through the door. “Asshole!”

Ashton turns at the sudden outburst to see a beautiful girl drenched to the bone shaking off her coat before hanging it on the coat rack. Her hair hangs in wet strands reaching a little past her chest, her makeup is a bit smudged but damn, she’s a looker. Ashton’s seen her on campus and at parties but never knew her name.

She takes the seat one over from him.

“Rum and coke please, Teddy,” she asks the bartender setting her purse on the counter. She lets out a deep sigh and takes out a compact, snatches a napkin then dabs at her face. She closes the compact with a snap then smiles her thanks as her drink is presented before her. She drinks half of it in one go.

It hasn’t even been a minute and she’s already done so much to keep Ashton’s attention piqued. Who is this free-spirited woman?

“Can I help you?” her attention is directed at him, big eyes staring expectantly.

“Um, no, sorry you just…are you all right?” he asks.

“I am now,” she lifts her glass and takes another sip. “And now that my asshole boyfriend is an ex. I’m so glad I’m graduating tomorrow.”

“You are too? Congratulations,” Ashton grins and she smiles back.

“What’s your name? I’ve seen you around campus before.”

“I’m Ashton,” he holds out his hand making sure not to give his last name. Even if it is stamped on a bottle nearly six feet away.

“Cressida,” she returns and takes his hand.

Her hand is cold and wet from the rain, but a spark of electricity is transferred through them. They jump at the contact and laugh.

“I’ve never heard a name like that before.”

“My parents love Greek mythology. It means gold.”

“It’s also the third precious metal,” Ashton adds. Cressida raises her eyebrows and laughs. He only knows this because his family is trying a new concoction to add gold flakes in their newest whisky brand.

“What’s the first?”

“I have no idea,” he chuckles. “I should have paid more attention in science class. I remember gold because it’s beautiful, useful, and rare.”

“Are you sure you’re still talking about the gold or is this your Segway into a pick-up line?”

“No, no, I swear that’s not what I’m—”

“I mean it’s working in your favor, Ashton, so by all means,” she smiles interrupting his apology.

“Oh, it is, is it?”

Her eyes move to his empty glass.

“Let me buy you a drink, what’s your poison?”

Ashton doesn’t want to say whisky, it’s been on his mind since he was old enough to understand what it was. He’s also worried if he says it, Cressida will immediately know who he is. His family’s whisky is known all around the world.

“I’ll have what you’re having.”

An hour later they’re stools are so close together her legs have somehow found their way over his, and Ashton loves the warmth through his jeans. She notices the gold ring on his finger with a small ruby nestled inside.

“Is this real gold?” she asks tracing it with her pinky.

“Are you going to rob me?” he jokes.

“No, gold is only the third precious metal after all,” she giggles.

“It’s real. It was my great grandfather’s,” Ashton nods.

“It’s pretty.”

“You’re pretty.”

Cressida’s eyes sparkle up to his and the way he’s looking at her makes her stomach flip and her cheeks heat up. No one has ever looked at her with such intensity before, not even her asshole boyfriend.

“Are you doing anything between now and walking the stage tomorrow?” she asks taking a leap. Ashton shakes his head, and she leans forward, her lips grazing his cheek before touching his ear. “Wanna do me?”

Ashton slaps down some bills on the bar and moves towards the door as quick as he can helping her put her coat on. He notices there isn’t a hood, but he brought an umbrella.

“My apartment is only ten minutes away,” he says holding up his red umbrella.

They walk through the rain filled street, her arm looped through his as they talk about school and friends and what their next step is after graduation. Ashton tries to deter that conversation from him, he wants to forget about it if only for a night. And Cressida is the perfect distraction.

“I’m going to spend the summer in Europe,” she says, “I’ll be in charge of my family’s business soon, so I want a bit more freedom. I’m going to visit all of the museums and the historical landmarks.”

“That sounds really great, I wish I could do that.”

“Why don’t you?”

“I’m also taking over my family’s business as soon as I cross the stage it’s mine. It’s a big responsibility.”

She hums in acknowledgment then gasps when he stops at his building. It’s only slightly ostentatious with a secured door and a security guard inside. She’s staring at the gold mailbox slots when Ashton spins her into the elevator, she giggles against his chest. Then Ashton cups her cheek and slots his lips with hers.

She tastes like rum and coke and a night to remember, his last night of freedom. They’re stumbling through his door, removing clothes as quickly as possible. They roll around his sheets, laughing and moaning and exploring each other’s bodies. Ashton rocks into her and she moves easily, picking up on his pace like this is the hundredth time instead of the first.

“Wow,” she huffs when he collapses on top of her after he came in the condom.

“I’ll say,” he grins and pecks her nose before rolling off her to remove the condom. He retrieves two bottles of water and hands her one, climbing in next to her.

“So, Ashton,” she sighs staring at him with mussed up hair. “What is your family business?”

“I…I don’t know if I want to tell you.”

“What? Are you part of the mafia?” she snickers twisting her hair into a very loose braid. The ends of her hair tickle her nipple and Ashton slides his eyes to her face.

“No,” he laughs, “It’s just…people treat me differently when they know.”

“I can relate to that, that’s why I don’t go around shouting mine from the rooftops either. Tell me, I promise I will still look at you as the guy who picked me up at a bar because of a gold fact.”

Ashton rolls his eyes then takes a deep breath.

“All right. My family owns Irwin Whisky, my grandfather created it back in the prohibition days. After tomorrow, I’m in charge.”

Cressida is silent for a long time, just staring at him with a vacant expression on her face.

“What? What is it?” Ashton asks in alarm sitting up straight.

“Ashton, my last name is James. As in James Brandy.”

Ashton’s heart plummets to his stomach. While he was learning about whisky growing up he also learned that his grandfather started the business with his good friend, Walter James. After the prohibition was over, they joined all of their assets to get the company rolling.

Then there was a fallout due to unpaid expenses and a deal Walter made without consulting Ashton’s great grandfather Frank that could have upended the company before it really started. Ashton learned about distillery and grains and wheat and also to never, ever interact with a James’ family member. All they’ll do is double cross you and keep secrets.

And now he just had sex with his family’s enemy.

Ashton and Cressida meet each other’s eye before they both leap out of bed. He’s quickly pulling on some pants while she’s slipping her sweater over her head, both of them shouting nonsensical words in surprise.

“Why didn’t you tell me at the bar?!” she demands.

“I just told you I don’t go around saying my name because people treat me differently! You didn’t tell me yours either!”

“How was I supposed to know I was hitting on an Irwin!” she rages trying to find her pants. “No one can ever know about this; oh, my mother would kill me!”

“At least you’re going to Europe for three months,” Ashton seethes.

“You could go too, you know. Just because you’re taking over the business doesn’t mean you’re trapped,” she snaps.

“Then why are you going?”

She lets out an angry huff and throws her hands in the air. “My trip doesn’t matter right now! What matters is that we just had sex.”

“Yeah, I was there,” he rolls his eyes then stops his actions of frantically moving about. He’s not even sure why he was doing so, it’s not like the SWAT team was going to come bursting through his door. “Wait, wait, what are we doing?”

“I’m trying to find my pants so I can leave!”

Ashton rushes in front of her and grabs her shoulders, he shakes her slightly until she’s looking at him.

“No, I mean…why are we acting like the ceiling is going to collapse? Was it a mistake we did this? Probably, but I don’t regret it Cressida, not one bit. You’re…”

“I’m what?” her eyes are blazing and that’s when Ashton notices the small flecks of gold inside of them.

“You’re gold; precious and beautiful and the rarest girl I’ve ever met in my life. No one has to know about this except us,” he shakes his head.

“You’re saying ‘this’ as if ‘this’ is something…”

“It could be,” he shrugs, his eyes imploring her to meet him in the middle. “I thought this was going to be a one-time thing, but after being with you…and hearing you’re going to Europe. I want that, too.”

“You want to go to Europe with me? Ashton, we just met and found out our families are like the Montagues and the Capulets. Do you remember the ending to that story?”

“I’m not saying we share the same car to the airport where we can be seen together. I don’t want to let you go just yet.”

“Ash, this is crazy!”

“If it’s so crazy then why aren’t you still trying to find your clothes?”

She opens her mouth to retort something but closes it because she has nothing to say. Even though they just met, that spark they felt at the bar continued to his bed. It was as if they knew each other from a different life and were reconnecting all over again.

“Maybe I’ll make the mistake and book a trip to Europe and mistakenly run into you at an art museum,” he says tugging her sweater off her again. “And maybe I’ll mistakenly lose my hotel key and stay with you.”

He bends down pressing his lips to her neck where he sucked a mark only forty-five minutes ago. Cressida sighs into him, her hands holding onto his neck as he kisses the lobe of her ear.

“How does that sound?”

She can picture it. They’ll be in another country where their family won’t see unless photographers capture them, but they both aren’t the face of the name of their family business yet. They’re still young and free for a little while longer. She’s happy she stumbled into the bar where he as and that he found her when her heart was broke.

“Then be my mistake,” she sighs capturing his lips with hers and they fall back onto the bed a tangle of limbs and moans.

*

“What’s on your mind over there?” she asks while they have breakfast on the balcony. The sun is warm on their backs as they indulge in pancakes, waffles, and bacon.

“I’m thinking of Europe,” he squeezes her calf that is resting on his lap. When they woke up she didn’t bring up the night before of her crying and he didn’t either, but the axe is still hanging over their heads. It’s only a matter of time before it comes striking down.

“That was the longest we were together,” she smiles fondly at the memory of many late starts in the morning. “I loved those three months. And now we only have three—”

“Cressida, don’t,” Ashton shakes his head and sets his espresso cup on the saucer. He drags her onto his lap, and she hooks her arms around his neck and shoulders. “We’ve agreed that when we’re here, the outside world doesn’t exist. We have until Monday to face the music.”

“The music won’t shut up in my head,” she knocks her forehead against his.

“I think I can help with that,” he mutters slipping his hand under the hem of her robe.

Cressida gasps as his finger nudges her center, she tries to kiss him, but her attention is otherwise occupied on his finger that is now twiddling inside her. Her back arches as she rocks on top of him, the shoulder of her robe falls down exposing her breast that Ashton quickly sucks into his mouth. Cressida moans in pleasure from both stimulations, she spreads her legs wider and Ashton bites onto her nipple.

“So pretty when you moan,” he mumbles on her skin and adds another finger. He works her over, scissoring and twiddling against her walls as his thumb presses against her clit harshly.

“Ash!” she chokes out yanking on his hair.

“That’s right, I’m the only thing that should be on your mind. Come for me, baby.”

He moves his arm faster and her toes curl as her head spins in pleasure. She’s panting his name like a prayer then finally slips her tongue in his mouth. This kiss reminds her of their last morning in Europe. They were having breakfast and the finality of their time together loomed over them like a dark cloud. Neither one of them wanted to go because they didn’t know when the next time they’d see each other would be.

She kisses him more fiercely, trying to push that sad memory away and the dark cloud that’s above them now. Sensing her urgency, Ashton removes his fingers from inside her and carries her into the room. She drops to the bed untying her robe watching with hunger in her eyes as he removes his loose sweatpants. He’s already hard and throbbing for her.

Ashton pushes her knees to her chest, kissing over the initials he branded on her skin last night, over her navel and finally to her mouth. He pushes himself inside her, they both groan at him going in dry but he knows it won’t be long until she’s lubricated herself for him.

“You’re perfect for me,” Ashton sighs rocking his hips into hers. The dry rub is becoming more fluid as he thrusts shallowly in and out of her.

“You’re my gold,” her nails scrape into his 5 o’clock shadow and nips at his lips.

“No baby,” he gives her a deep thrust that has her moan loudly. “That’s you.”

When she’s slick enough, Ashton flips her over onto her stomach, her face pressed to the robe and her hair draped over her back gloriously.

“Ready for me, angel?” he asks gripping her hips tightly and presses between her folds.

“Always.”

Ashton drives himself into her, skin slapping against skin drifts outside in the morning breeze. He fucks into her desperately, wanting this moment to last forever and when she starts to rock back against him, he swears he sees stars. They’re frantic, it’s chaotic, it’s their secret of this love affair in physical form.

“Right there, Ash, yes!” she mewls tossing her head back.

Ashton fists his hand into her hair, tilting her head up so he can suck on her neck as he continues to plow into her. She’s choking on moans and his name, begging for her release.

“Give it to me, Cressida,” he breathes, and she falls apart at the sound of her name.

She squeezes on his cock and Ashton can’t hold on much longer from that as she relishes in her orgasm. Before he can comprehend what’s happening, he’s spilling inside her and they collapse onto the bed, their bodies slick with sweat. He’s never come inside her before, a rule they agreed on together because that would only complicate things more. But this weekend, all bets are off.

Her hair sticks to his chest and he trembles, rocking his hips until he’s finished. Ashton brushes her hair from her back, and he kisses sweetly onto her spine while Cressida gathers her breath. She gathers his fingers with hers, bringing them to her lips and kisses them. He breathes her in, a mixture of her own scent and his combined. It’s intoxicating.

“I’ll go get a towel,” he inhales heavily through his nose, the air whistling in her hair.

“Not yet…stay a little longer,” she tightens her hold on his fingers.

He stays until he feels her heartbeat slow against his hand on her chest. With one final kiss he pulls himself gingerly out of her. They both wince at the loss of warmth.

“I’m sorry. I know we agreed not to do that,” he apologizes cleaning her.

She rolls over scooting to the edge of the bed and wraps her arms around his waist. Ashton kisses her hair.

“I’m not sorry. It’s harder to let go now,” she sniffs.

“I know.”

Taglist: @calpalirwin @myloverboyash @loveroflrh @cxddlyash @princesslrh @spicylftv​ @notinthesameguey​ @itjustkindahappenedreally​ @calumance​ @thew0rldneedsmcreycghurt​ @sarcastically-defensive17​ @another-lonely-heart​ @devilatmydoor​ @thatscooibaby​ @suchalonelysunflower​ @dead-and-golden​ @mymindwide​ @blackbutterfliescal​ @redrattlers​ @karajaynetoday​ @quasighost​ @i-like-5sos​ @creampiecashton​ @calpops​ @littledrummeraussie​ @sexgodashton​ @f-mu​ @mystic-232

[iheartbookbran]

Anthony, Penelope, Marina and Colin deserved better...

Beware, rant ahead

Ok I wish I didn’t feel such strong need to continue beating this dead horse but oopsie, I will very much be beating it some more.

Like, my fave books of the Bridgerton series are Anthony’s and Colin’s books, so I’m seething about what they did with their characterizations, Anthony and Penelope in particular, because Colin’s only real sin was being boring, and if you remember how funny he’s in the books it makes me wanna fall on my knees and ask Chris Van Dusen whyyyy omg why would you do something like that to such a dynamic character. So yeah, Colin is boring af and a moron but at least he isn’t an asshole the way show Anthony and Penelope are, and I’ve seen people say that they can always be redeemed in future seasons, if we get them, but that’s exactly my problem, because they never had to be redeemed in the books, to begin with. Penelope more so than Anthony but let me begin by defending my boy.

Is he a jerk sometimes? Sure. Is he actively awful and uncaring towards those close to him, especially his family? Hell no, quite the opposite, in fact. Not to be controversial on main but in the books... he was right in not wanting Daphne to be courted by a man who he knew damn right had no intention of marrying her and as far as he was aware was only making her waste her time, and he was right in demanding Simon pay for compromising her honor. Could he have been more mindful of what Daphne had to say and listened to her wishes? Of course, but considering Simon and Daphne (both in the show and in the books) aren’t exactly masters in communication themselves, Anthony doesn’t come off as the biggest offender in that situation.

What he never did was force Daphne, or any of his sisters really, to do anything; if they didn’t like a guy then that guy was out of their lives no question asked, and he loved them enough to always have their best interests at heart, for his sisters and his brothers, to the point that even though he’s traumatized and thinks he’s gonna die young he’s still willing to get past that to do his duty and marry, because he doesn’t want to pass that burden on to his little brothers (so him deciding to leave all his responsibilities to Benedict so he can fck off with his mistress is... like, a choice lmao). In fact all the subplot with Siena felt like a choice on the writers part, like they truly liked Benedict and Sophie’s story so they just slapped it on Anthony so he could act all sad and sexy while they gave us foreshadowing with the subtlety of a warharmer that he’s ending up with Kate anyways (and that Benedict is ending with Sophie anyways too, so they would be using that storyline twice, unless they do make him bi and fall in love with a man, but maybe that’s too much of ask for this show), so what was Siena’s purpose in the story? Who tf knows not me.

Now Penelope, my god. Yes I know I joke Penny has never done anything wrong in her life, and I still love her, but she was wrong. Very much so. What she did was significantly worse than what Marina did, which I still don’t condone at all. Like yes, I still maintain that Marina tricking Colin into marriage was wrong (and I’ll go later on why that whole subplot was racist af), but what Penelope did could have not only ruined Marina and herself and her sisters reputations, but it was basically condemning an innocent unborn child to a life in the streets, that’s messed up. Even if Marina was rose-coloring her potential life with Colin and he might have grown to resent her, at least the baby would’ve been alright. And my problem with that whole subplot is that all of it was resolved so neatly, with Sir Phillip sweeping in to save the day so we don’t have to actually see what Penelope’s actions could have caused, but the implications are still very much there.

And I’m cracking my mind trying to figure out whether the showrunners just... really hate Colin’s book and Penelope as a character so they’re trying to inflict some kind of character assassination on her so they can get away with writing him off with another person without causing much outrage, or if they just thought there wasn’t enough ~drama~ or stakes on their book so they have to add them, and give him some kind of bullshit tragic romantic past to explain why he doesn’t want to marry, whereas in the books, the reason he doesn’t marry anyone is because he doesn’t feel like it, and that’s ok, there’s no need for every character to have a tragic backstory and to be riddled with angst; Colin is that character, he’s an easy going guy who’s just not interested in marriage until he falls in love with Penny AND THAT’S VALID, just because he doesn’t have the most complex motivations out there doesn’t mean he isn’t a compelling character. The stakes in his story after he discovers Penny is Whistledown are, as he points out, that she has insulted so many people there’s no way some of them wouldn’t want to retaliate if word came out, and he cares for her and doesn’t want her to get hurt (there’s also a dumb part about him being secretly jealous of her accomplishments as Whistledown, but thankfully he gets over that pretty quickly).

But while I am on that, it is true that Penelope wrote some uncharitable things about the mean people around her, but she never ever ruined someone’s reputation, let alone endanger the future of a child. Was she a bitch sometimes? Yeah, but she was also kind to a lot of people and her criticism was never unwarranted and never did more damage than maybe annoy a couple of girls like Cressida. I just hate the idea of this needing to turn into some sort of ~redemption arc~ for Penelope because, again, in the books she really didn’t have to make up for anything, definitely not to Colin, who was actually the one who had to do much of the heavy lifting in their relationship when he realized that he literally slept on her for years.

And now regarding Marina, like yes, she was wrong and I stand by that statement (but not as wrong as Penelope), but tbh I find it hard to be mad at her when they gave her such a racist storyline, as the scheming woc who gets pregnant out of wedlock and then tries to seduce the innocent white man, until the virtuous white girl needs to step up to save him. At least that’s what I thought initially as the writers intention, but honestly I’m not so sure anymore, I doubt they will continue to write her and Colin as a couple otherwise they would’ve bothered to show them interacting outside of her manipulating him and him acting like a bumbling idiot, the most sincere moment they had together was when he comforted her about the lie, but by that time this bitch (me) was empty and didn’t give a shit anymore. Literally all their other interactions where shown through Penelope’s POV to let us know she was sad, and Colin’s most significant scenes where again... with Penelope (because it isn’t as if he has a family and his own moments in the books outside of being an object for Penelope to pine after).

And as I said before, Marina had a—relatively—happy ending: married to a man she doesn’t love (just as she didn’t love Colin) but who will treat her right and care for her and her child in comfort. Is arguably a better ending than if she’d married Colin because now she doesn’t have to go through the trouble of explaining things to her new husband and run the risk of him resenting her forever. Phillip may not love her but he knows who he’s marrying and why he’s marrying her. That’s literally the same fate Marina had in the books, and it makes me wonder why, oh why would the writers do that.

Why create such a contrived plot to give a character who appears in one(1) chapter of an 8 books series then promptly dies, all at the expense of the characterization of one of the most beloved heroines of said books series? Why would you write this racist storyline for a character whose fate is dying? And now I’m horrified at the repercussions that can come with Marina committing su*cide like in canon, because the implications would be that Penelope would be responsible for it (and I hate the idea of blaming one person for the su*cide of another, fictional or otherwise, is harmful and we need to be careful with making such implications), which would make her even less redeemable or like, likable in general. Not to mention that would be like putting the final racist nail in Marina’s coffin by giving her that ending.

It makes me wonder, seriously, if Chris Van Dusen hated Romancing Mister Bridgerton that much, if he loathed the idea of writing a fat character finding love and getting sex that much. I just wanna know why lmfao.

[heavyarethecrowns]

Hello, I was wondering, if Harry married another woman -someone white, blonde,someone that wasn’t Meghan-, do you think things would have been different? Or they would have unfolded more or less like they did with Meghan? It’s sad to think that Harry is,was and is (was hopefully)going to be only a “lightning rod” for his family, I’m glad he found M, he deserved somebody to lean on.

Hi, I would like to start out by saying this was not to do with his family. I know many in the Meghan fandom keep talking about the BRF being racist and that they betrayed Harry and Meghan and so on and so on but that is false and little evidence. 

The problem lies with the press. Just the press. They have used Harry as a punching bag since he was a little kid and it has only gotten worse as he has grown. Even making up that James Hewitt is his father when they KNOW that Diana and Hewitt began their affair when Harry was already 2 years old and the sole reason Diana and Hewitt met was because she wanted a riding instructor for her children, plural. 

But as for if Harry married a white woman would things be different. Well obv the racism wouldn’t be there. But other than that, it would be exactly the same. As we can look at his previous relationships to see how they would act. As again contary to popular belief in the Meghan fandom Chelsy, Florence and Cressida would not treated well by the press and anyone who says that was not here for those relationships and have not done their research. 

Chelsy was hounded, she was chased in her car to the point she nearly crashed. Papz would take pics through her school/college window when she was in class. She had pics taken through her house window, when she was on her balcony and in her garden. They should rude disgusting things at her  and shoved cameras in her face. None of the above ever happened to Kate. Ever. 

Chelsy was called a dumb blonde party girl who is lazy and a sexpot, not because of who she was but because she was, well Harry’s girlfriend. I mean she was studying International Relations, Economics and later Law but apparently all blondes are dumb right? They constantly degraded her and her and Harry’s relationship to just sex. Making up stories of how they were having sex in toilets and even how that is how they met. Oh their relationship is not serious and won’t last it is just sex. 

She was constantly compared to Kate with Kate being perfect, smart, hardworking and the good option, the sensible option. Whereas Chelsy was always portrayed negatively and called, again a fling, troubled, lazy and will be bad for the RF. 

In fact the press actually made up a lie that Chelsy’s father had links to Mugabe. A lie that many still repeat despite it being proven false. That is how far they went. 

Not to mention a lot of the articles about Chelsy had strong xenophobia in the articles. The British Press don’t like foreigners - see Philip and Princess Michael for other examples. 

Then there was Florence, Aristo, blonde and white. Did she get good press? nope. She was basically called a prostitute. As apparently being a model means you are akin to a prostitute. Also again, it is just sex and not serious, a fling and she would be bad for the RF. 

Cressida, Aristo again, blonde and white. Well she is a dancer and actress which means she is an “attention whore” both to the press and the fandom. Her family was basically bashed over and over in the press. Lies made up. Her Mother got the worse of it because she was a divorcee so she had to be demeaned constantly in the press and also the fandom because that is not suitable. Cressida was constantly accused of using Harry, of being a slob, that her family was unsuitable and so on and so on. 

So no, it would not have been better with a white blonde because his partners were always bashed. It just changed what they used to attack the partner with. 

Anyone saying his exes had it better because they were white are smoking something. The Meghan fans claiming that are showing their ignorance and delusions. 

As for the RF, they didn’t care about Meghan’s ethnicity, what country she is from and her background. I mean again Meghan fans need to learn what they are talking about. Anyone saying Meghan was not liked because she is not white, was foreign, was divorced ect need only look at Gary Lewis, a divorced father of one who is Maori. Right there we have all boxes ticked and he was beloved and no one cared. Just like no one cared Lady Gabriella dated an Indian man for several years, he was welcomed in to the RF too - including by her Mother, Princess Michael who is not a racist. In fact her ex spoke to the press over how well he was treated and there was no prejudice and racism. 

All Meghan fans have is “HM/Charles did not release a public statement” which is true however we don’t even know if they were asked to by Harry and Meghan, if Harry and Meghan wanted them too or even if Harry and Meghan said they DIDN’T want them too. So in other words, they have nothing.